Comments: Website input field causes accessibility warning

[wildworks]

Originally reported at ​https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/73557

The comment form has the following HTML for entering a website URL:

<p class="comment-form-url">
  <label for="url">Website</label>
  <input id="url" name="url" type="url" value="" size="30" maxlength="200" autocomplete="url">
</p>

Apparently, some accessibility scanning tool flags this HTML as an accessibility error:

WCAG2AA.Principle1.Guideline1_3.1_3_5.H98.InvalidAutoComplete.UrlInvalid autocomplete value: url. Element does not belong to Url control group.

Here is the resource related to this error: ​https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/identify-input-purpose.html

First of all, I would appreciate it if you could evaluate whether this HTML is really inappropriate from an accessibility perspective.

[joedolson]

What tool is returning this error? I can't see anything wrong about this. The error appears to be claiming that 'url' is not a valid value for the autocomplete attribute, but it very definitely is.

This seems like a tool fault to me.

[wildworks]

Replying to joedolson:

What tool is returning this error? I can't see anything wrong about this. The error appears to be claiming that 'url' is not a valid value for the autocomplete attribute, but it very definitely is.

This seems like a tool fault to me.

I'm currently checking with the person who submitted the issue to find out what tool they are using, but for example, it appears that a similar error is defined in HTML_CodeSniffer:

​https://squizlabs.github.io/HTML_CodeSniffer/Standards/WCAG2/#:~:text=Invalid%20autocomplete%20value.%20Element%20does%20not%20belong%20to%20Url%20control%20group.

[sabernhardt]

The report came from ​Little Forest, checking a page that includes a Post Comments Form block inside the Comments block, using a block theme.

I do not know how Little Forest checks it, but HTML_CodeSniffer seems to be missing the url type in its ​'isUrl' check.

[wildworks]

HTML_CodeSniffer seems to be missing the url type in its ​'isUrl' check.

@sabernhardt Good catch! It certainly looks like the HTML_CodeSniffer issue.

[joedolson]

It looks like HTML_CodeSniffer hasn't had a release in almost 5 years; that may be something that should be considered a dead project. I'll open an issue there, but this should just be closed as invalid.