Level A · WCAG 2.0
3.3.2 Labels or Instructions
Fields that need input have labels or instructions.
Partly automated Some failures are detectable, others need judgement.
How it fails in practice
A search field labelled only by a magnifying glass icon. A date field with no hint about format that rejects 05/11/2026 without saying why.
How to fix it
Give every field a real label. A placeholder is not a label — it disappears exactly when the user needs it.
At a glance
- Level
- Level A — the minimum. Failing one of these usually makes something impossible rather than merely hard.
- Principle
- Understandable
- Guideline
- 3.3 Input Assistance
- Added in
- WCAG 2.0
- EN 301 549
- 9.3.3.2
- Automated check
- Partly automated
Partly automated
How far an automated check gets
A tool finds some failures here and cannot see the rest. A clean automated result means the checks that exist found nothing — not that the criterion is met. This is the gap that makes a green scan look like an accessible site, and it is where the keyboard agent, the agents still in development and a human reviewer do the remaining work.
An unlabelled field is found automatically; on a crawl from an account, so are a field labelled only by its placeholder and a required field not marked as required.
Rules that check this criterion
form-field-multiple-labelsForm field must not have multiple label elementslabelForm field without a labelselect-nameSelect without a label
The rule ids are axe-core’s (version 4.14.0), the open-source engine our scan runs, and our keyboard agent’s — the names a report or a CI log will show. An underlined id has a page of its own here.
Where it matters most
The guides that list it among the criteria to check first.
Related criteria
Other criteria under the same guideline.
Further reading
-
Form label
A visible, programmatically associated label for a form field; a placeholder is not a label (WCAG 1.3.1, 3.3.2, 4.1.2).
-
label
The axe rule label flags input and textarea fields with no accessible name. Why a placeholder is not a label, and the fix – with code example.
-
select-name
The axe rule select-name flags select drop-downs with no accessible name. Why the chosen option is not a label, and the fix – with code example.
Find out which criteria your site fails
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