Accueillir | Iowa.gov

First time visit: View without clicking anything

Contact Us | Iowa.gov

Maps & Information | Iowa.gov

About Alignment | Iowa.gov

Subscribe to State News & Information | Iowa.gov

Department of Public Defense | Iowa.gov

How To Guides | Iowa.gov

Bienvenido | Iowa.gov

Topics | Iowa.gov

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

January 2026

December 2025

State of Iowa

	Title / URL	Issues
	Accueillir \| Iowa.govwww.iowa.gov/fr	1
	First time visit: View without clicking anythingwww.iowa.gov/	1
	Contact Us \| Iowa.govwww.iowa.gov/contact-us	1
	Maps & Information \| Iowa.govwww.iowa.gov/maps-information	1
	About Alignment \| Iowa.govwww.iowa.gov/about-alignment	1
	Subscribe to State News & Information \| Iowa.govwww.iowa.gov/subscribe	1
	Department of Public Defense \| Iowa.govwww.iowa.gov/public-defense	1
	How To Guides \| Iowa.govwww.iowa.gov/how-to-guides	1
	Bienvenido \| Iowa.govwww.iowa.gov/es	1
	Topics \| Iowa.govwww.iowa.gov/topics	1

Add a submit button to all forms

State of Iowa

Where this issue has occurred