Privacy policy | National Deaf Children's Society

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Forms should always contain a submit button, otherwise some people using
accessible technologies may not be able to submit the form.

Submit buttons are `<input>` elements with a type attribute of `submit` or
`image`, or `<button>` elements with type `submit`.

## Rationale 

Many users expect to be able to press enter in a form to submit it. However,
this is not always possible.

Users of some assistive technologies may (depending on the technology) only
be able to press a button to submit the form. In the absence of a submit
button, the user may not be able to submit the form.

In addition, the absence of a submit button suggests that the form may 
provide an automatic 'change of context', i.e. major change to the user 
interface without the user choosing to do so. This can be highly disorientating
to some users.

## Methodology

* All `<form>` elements on the page are tested separately.
* Check whether the <form> contains any of the following elements, and that the elements are visible
  when the page first loads:
  * `<input>`
  * `<textarea>`
  * `<checkbox>`
  * `<select>`
  * `<button>`
* If the form contains any of the above elements, then it is considered to
  need a submit button. If a submit button is missing, then a failure is reported.

### Field visibility check

The check for field visibility (above) is designed to ignore forms which perform functions not normally
associated with user interaction, such as tracking code, or ASPX forms which wrap every page 
but which don't contain any interactive elements. These are common potential false positives.

A trade-off here is that some forms may be invisible when a page loads, and later revealed to
a user following some interaction. If these are missing a submit button, Silktide will not detect them.
In practice, this false negative is far less likely than the false positive this prevents. 

## Further reading

* [WCAG 3.2.2 - On Input](https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Understanding/on-input.html)
* [Technique H32](https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/H32.html)

form-submit-required

December 2025

November 2025

National Deaf Children's Society

	Title / URL	Issues
	Privacy policy \| National Deaf Children's Societywww.ndcs.org.uk/privacy-policy	1
	Helpline \| National Deaf Children's Societywww.ndcs.org.uk/advice-and-support/ways-we-can-support-you/helpline	1
	Recruitment support \| National Deaf Children's Societywww.ndcs.org.uk/recruitment-support	1
	Website accessibility \| National Deaf Children's Societywww.ndcs.org.uk/website-accessibility	1
	Jobs \| National Deaf Children's Societywww.ndcs.org.uk/jobs	1
	Where we are fundraising \| National Deaf Children's Societywww.ndcs.org.uk/fundraising-and-giving/about-our-fundraising/where-we-are-fundraising	1
	Homewww.ndcs.org.uk/invented-url-for-404-page	1
	Working with us \| National Deaf Children's Societywww.ndcs.org.uk/working-us	1
	Who we are \| National Deaf Children's Societywww.ndcs.org.uk/about-us/who-we-are	1
	Terms and conditions \| National Deaf Children's Societywww.ndcs.org.uk/terms-and-conditions	1

Add a submit button to all forms

National Deaf Children's Society

Where this issue has occurred