Forms: required checkbox and radio groups don't link their fieldset to the error message

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Assessment

Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Newbie friendliness
78/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
php, wordpress
Domain
accessibility, frontend

Research direction

Start in projects/packages/forms/src/contact-form/class-contact-form-field.php and compare get_described_by() with the radio and checkbox fieldset markup around the cited lines. Reproduce with the provided required-field form, submit it empty, and inspect whether each fieldset's aria-describedby points to its error message. Done when both groups expose that accessible description; the issue does not name a test file.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Bug Needs triage
Impacted plugin

Jetpack

Quick summary

When a required single input fails validation, it gets aria-describedby pointing at its error message. Required checkbox and radio groups don't: the fieldset gets aria-invalid="true", but nothing references the error message.

After clicking Submit on an empty form:

Field aria-invalid aria-describedby Accessible description in Chromium
Required text input true g4-yourname-text-error-message "This field is required."
Required field-checkbox-multiple fieldset true none empty
Required radio fieldset true none empty

The error messages exist, as g4-picksome-select-error-message and g4-pickone-radio-error-message. The individual checkbox and radio inputs don't reference them either. The visible error therefore isn't programmatically associated with its group (relevant to WCAG 1.3.1).

Single inputs get the link from get_described_by(), but the group fieldset tags don't use it (radio, checkbox). Adding it there looks like the fix, with type radio for radio groups and select for checkbox groups, but I haven't tried that change.

Steps to reproduce
  1. Add this form to a page, with Jetpack's Forms module active:
<!-- wp:jetpack/contact-form -->
<div class="wp-block-jetpack-contact-form">
<!-- wp:jetpack/field-text {"required":true} -->
<div class="wp-block-jetpack-field-text"><!-- wp:jetpack/label {"label":"Your name","required":true} /-->
<!-- wp:jetpack/input /--></div>
<!-- /wp:jetpack/field-text -->
<!-- wp:jetpack/field-checkbox-multiple {"required":true} -->
<div class="wp-block-jetpack-field-checkbox-multiple"><!-- wp:jetpack/label {"label":"Pick some","required":true} /-->
<!-- wp:jetpack/options -->
<ul class="wp-block-jetpack-options"><!-- wp:jetpack/option {"label":"Red"} /-->
<!-- wp:jetpack/option {"label":"Blue"} /--></ul>
<!-- /wp:jetpack/options --></div>
<!-- /wp:jetpack/field-checkbox-multiple -->
<!-- wp:jetpack/field-radio {"required":true} -->
<div class="wp-block-jetpack-field-radio"><!-- wp:jetpack/label {"label":"Pick one","required":true} /-->
<!-- wp:jetpack/options -->
<ul class="wp-block-jetpack-options"><!-- wp:jetpack/option {"label":"Yes"} /-->
<!-- wp:jetpack/option {"label":"No"} /--></ul>
<!-- /wp:jetpack/options --></div>
<!-- /wp:jetpack/field-radio -->
<!-- wp:jetpack/button {"element":"button","text":"Submit"} /-->
</div>
<!-- /wp:jetpack/contact-form -->
  1. View the page logged out and click Submit with everything empty.
  2. Inspect the text input and both fieldset elements.

Expected: each fieldset has aria-describedby pointing at its error message, as the text input does.

Actual: each fieldset has aria-invalid="true" and no aria-describedby.

Tested on

  • Jetpack 16.3.1 (Forms package 8.3.2) and 16.4 (Forms package 8.3.7), with the same result on both. The fieldset code looks the same on trunk, from reading the source only.
  • WordPress 7.1.4, PHP 8.3, Twenty Twenty-Five, only Jetpack active, on WordPress Playground in Jetpack offline mode.
  • Headless Chromium 156. Both inner-block field markup and attribute-style markup behave the same.

I checked Chromium's accessibility tree, not a real screen reader. I only ran the default form style. No console errors.

Site owner impact

Fewer than 20% of the total website/platform users

Severity

Moderate

What other impact(s) does this issue have?

No revenue impact

If a workaround is available, please outline it here.

Site code can add aria-describedby to the fieldset, pointing at the error message's ID.

Platform (Simple and/or Atomic)

Self-hosted

Dominant language
PHP
Stars
1.9k
Forks
906
Avg merge
1d 18h
Merged PRs (30d)
800

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