Justin Yarbrough talks about form validation and screen readers

Justin says: "Error messages: Make them clear, make them understandable. Don't write a paragraph if you can write a sentence." Thanks to Fable for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Transcript Nic Hi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairments, and what barrier they encounter on the web. Just a reminder, that transcript for this episode and all other episodes are available on the website at the time of publication. You can find them at https://a11yrules.com. I want to thank fable for sponsoring this episode. Without Fable the show would not be possible. Fable is a leading accessibility platform powered by disabled people. Fable moves organizations from worrying about compliance to building incredible accessible user experiences through product testing, and custom courses. You can learn more about how Fable can work for your team at https://makeitfable.com/nic. Today I'm talking with Justin Yarborough again. Hey, Justin, how are you? Justin I'm doing good. How about you? Nic I'm doing good. I'm glad that the first encounter with me for the podcast didn't turn you off completely and that you wanted to bring up a new topic. Before we dive into that, let me ask you, for those people that didn't listen to the other episode, what's your impairment or your disability? Justin I'm blind, I basically have zero vision. Nic Okay, and that means I assume you're using a screen reader? Justin Yep. Nic Cool. So, blind screen reader user, and you said you wanted to talk about form validation? I guess that's a current pet peeve of yours. Tell me about what's the issue around form validation? How's it an impact for you? Justin It's, I think it's I mean, it's, it's definitely a valuable one, especially, you know, for someone who's blind, but it's something that definitely one of those areas that definitely can benefit a, you know, benefits a whole host of people. It the the reason I think of it, it's an it's an it's an area that kind of just interests me, you know, as in my work day to day, working in accessibility myself, is just thinking through, like how a form is built, and how you, you know, let people know, maybe there are mistakes in it, or, and how to fix it, and stuff like that. And when I, when I emailed you, actually, or sent you a message to talk about this topic, I was actually working on a project working with this was one of the clients I work with, and was why it was fresh in the mind. You know, I think the the really important thing with form validation is just to, you know, if someone, you know, fills out that form, and like, hit submit, and maybe they have no idea what happened, you know, why is it not moving through, especially if like, you're, you're someone like me, who can't, you know, you're not seeing the screen, you hit that submit button, and it just doesn't do anything, you're just, I'm probably just going to just assume something's broken and move on. So you know, looking at a good like, form validation pattern where someone can understand what's going on, what the problems are, in, you know, be given some guidance on how to fix it is, I think, just usually important. One of the pattern that is most used with the client I work with, and one I'm a huge fan of, is when you hit that submit button, if not everything validates I love those forms where they'll automatically throw focus up to the first field with an error and have that, you know, error message programmatically associated with the form because it tells it tells me immediately, okay, hey, there's something wrong here. You know, it, it takes him to the field, it tells me there's something wrong, it gives me a description, basically, you know, of what's wrong, what, what I need to fix, and lets me know that and then, you know, since it's that that first one, if you've got, you know, say multiple fields