WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: Handling with accessible error messages.

for

From: Tim Harshbarger
Date: Sep 23, 2010 6:48AM

One option might be to make the error messages links. When the user
clicks on the error message focus is then moved to the field with the
error.

How else do you visually notify users which field has the error?

Depending on your audience, ARIA provides some mechanisms that might be
useful. For example, using aria-describedby to programmatically
indicate a relationship between the field and the error message.

If you have a long submission form or there are a lot of fields of
similar type, you might want to provide some kind of mechanism that
allows the user to see the error message next to the field. That might
be useful to people using screen magnification or people who might find
themselves constantly scrolling to the error messages and back to the
fields because they keep forgetting exactly what the error was.

Tim