Takeaways from Form Design Patterns by Adam Silver

Labels

From Accessibility for Everyone by Laura Kalbag, four parameters that improve user experiences for everyone:

• Visual: make it easy to see
• Auditory: make it easy to hear
• Motor: make it easy to interact with
• Cognitive: make it easy to understand

Labels are one of the most important aspects of forms because of the way they serve these parameters.

By looking at labels from each of these standpoints, we can see just how important labels are. Sighted users can read them, visually-impaired users can hear them by using a screen reader, and motor-impaired users can more easily set focus to the field thanks to the larger hit area.

Every form control that accepts input should have a label. Things like submit buttons that don’t accept input don’t need a label (as long as they have text within them).

Placeholders

Placeholder text is optional and always a nice-to-have. Any information that the user needs to fill in the form correctly should be text on the page (ideally below the label).

Example of this for a password field:

<div class="field">
  <label for="password">
    <span class="field-label">Password</span>
    <span class="field-hint"
      >Must contain 8+ characters with at least 1 number and 1 uppercase
      letter.</span
    >
  </label>
  <input type="password" id="password" name="password" />
</div>

Question protocols

Password fields

Add a button for password reveals so that you don’t have to add a second password confirmation input and your users can still check their password before they submit the form.