Data - University of Illinois System

President's Office - University of Illinois System

Illinois Innovation Network - University of Illinois System

System Initiatives - University of Illinois System

Economic Impact - University of Illinois System

Research & Innovation - University of Illinois System

Illinois Freedom of Information Act - University of Illinois System

Online Courses Catalogue - University of Illinois System

About the System - University of Illinois System

Alumni - University of Illinois System

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

University of Illinois

Title / URL	Issues
Data - University of Illinois Systemwww.uillinois.edu/data	1
President's Office - University of Illinois Systemwww.uillinois.edu/president	1
Illinois Innovation Network - University of Illinois Systemwww.uillinois.edu/about/iin	1
System Initiatives - University of Illinois Systemwww.uillinois.edu/initiatives	1
Economic Impact - University of Illinois Systemwww.uillinois.edu/economic	1
Research & Innovation - University of Illinois Systemwww.uillinois.edu/research	1
Illinois Freedom of Information Act - University of Illinois Systemwww.uillinois.edu/erc/foia	1
Online Courses Catalogue - University of Illinois Systemwww.uillinois.edu/online	1
About the System - University of Illinois Systemwww.uillinois.edu/about	1
Alumni - University of Illinois Systemwww.uillinois.edu/alumni	1

Add a submit button to all forms

University of Illinois

Where this issue has occurred