See Understanding Techniques for WCAG Success Criteria for important information about the usage of these informative techniques and how they relate to the normative WCAG 2.0 success criteria. The Applicability section explains the scope of the technique, and the presence of techniques for a specific technology does not imply that the technology can be used in all situations to create content that meets WCAG 2.0.
All technologies.
This technique relates to:
The objective of this technique is to provide context sensitive help for users as they enter data in forms by providing at least one link to the help information on each Web page. The link targets a help page with information specific to that Web page. Another approach is to provide a help link for every interactive control. Positioning this link immediately before or after the control allows users to easily tab to it if they have problems in the control. Displaying the help information in a new browser window ensures that any data that has already been entered into the form will not be lost. NOTE: A link is not the only means to provide help.
The example below shows a label element that includes a help link. Including the help link within the label element allows screen reader users to have access to the help link when interacting with the input form control.
Example Code:
<form action="test.html">
<label for="test">Test control
<a href="help.html" target="_blank">Help</a></label>
<input type="text" name="test" id="test" />
</form>
Identify a Web page that contains forms.
Determine if there is at least one link to help information explaining how to complete the form on this Web page.
Determine if there are links either before or after each interactive control to information specific to that control.
Either #2 or #3 are true.
If this is a sufficient technique for a success criterion, failing this test procedure does not necessarily mean that the success criterion has not been satisfied in some other way, only that this technique has not been successfully implemented and can not be used to claim conformance.