Open your most recent survey or form in a new browser tab. Now close your eyes and try to complete it using only your keyboard. No mouse. No trackpad. Just Tab, Enter, and arrow keys.

If you're like most form builders, you'll hit a wall within 30 seconds. A dropdown that won't open. A custom radio button that Tab skips entirely. A "Next" button buried so deep in the DOM that it takes 47 keystrokes to reach.

Now imagine that's your only option. Every form, every day.

One billion people worldwide — 15% of the global population — live with some form of disability. This includes 285 million people with visual impairments, 466 million with hearing loss, and hundreds of millions with motor, cognitive, or neurological disabilities. When your form isn't accessible, you're not excluding a niche edge case. You're excluding one in seven humans.

And increasingly, you're also breaking the law.

The Legal Landscape in 2026

Accessibility litigation is no longer theoretical. In the U.S., over 4,000 digital accessibility lawsuits were filed in 2025 alone, and the trend is accelerating. The European Accessibility Act (EAA), effective June 2025, mandates accessibility for digital products and services across the EU. Canada, Australia, and the UK have similar frameworks.

The standards aren't vague. WCAG 2.2 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) provides specific, testable criteria organized into three levels:

Level	Meaning	Required by most regulations
A	Minimum accessibility	Yes
AA	Standard compliance target	Yes (ADA, EAA, EN 301 549)
AAA	Enhanced accessibility	Recommended, not mandated

For forms specifically, WCAG covers everything from label associations to error handling to timing constraints. Meeting Level AA isn't just a legal checkbox — it's the baseline for forms that work for people with disabilities.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Form Accessibility