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Forms

Personal-data field has no autocomplete

WCAG 2.2 success criterion 1.3.5 Identify Input Purpose (Level AA)

WCAG 2.2
1.3.5 Identify Input Purpose
Level
AA
Default severity
Needs review
Available in
Free

Why it matters

The autocomplete attribute tells the browser what a field is for — the visitor's email, phone number or postcode. Browsers can then fill it in, which saves people with motor or memory impairments from typing the same details on every form, and assistive tools can add familiar icons next to the fields.

Who it affects: Screen reader users, voice-control users who say a field's label to move to it, and people with memory or attention difficulties who lose a placeholder once they type.

What Lumtera flags

Text, email and phone fields that seem to ask for the visitor's own details — name, email, phone, street address, postcode, city, country, company or date of birth — but have no autocomplete value, or only "on" or "off". Email and phone fields always count; other fields are judged by their label, name, ID and placeholder, and the item suggests the right value. Search forms, read-only and disabled fields, and fields about someone else or not about a person (a friend's email, a coupon code, a message, a username) are skipped.

Check ID input-autocomplete-missing — use it to filter the content report or with wp lumtera issues --rule.

How to fix it in WordPress

Add an autocomplete attribute naming what the field collects, such as autocomplete="email", "name", "tel", "street-address" or "postal-code". Most form plugins have an autocomplete setting on each field. Only fields that ask about the visitor themselves need it, so dismiss this item for fields asking about someone else (for example, a friend's email).

Example

Flagged
<label for="email">Email</label>
<input type="email" id="email" name="email">
Fixed
<label for="email">Email</label>
<input type="email" id="email" name="email" autocomplete="email">

How to check your fix

  1. Update the post. The issue disappears from the Accessibility sidebar on the next check, and from the site report on the next scan.
  2. Click each field's label: the cursor should move into the field. With a screen reader, each field should announce its label when it receives focus.

Find this issue across your whole site

Lumtera runs this check in the block editor sidebar as you write, in the Elementor panel, in Review mode on the live page, and across the whole site in the content report and with wp lumtera scan. You can change its severity or turn it off in Accessibility → Settings.

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