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Does it make a difference in screen reader accessibility to show a success message in the same page a form was submitted? Or is it better to redirect to a different page?

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  • It depends how the page has been built. Content that changes dynamically can be announced to the user through ARIA Live Regions for instance.
    – JonW ♦
    Jan 18, 2019 at 13:50

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Depends what you mean by "difference".

From a strict WCAG conformance perspective, whether you show a confirmation message on the same page or show on a new page, either is ok as long as you have coded it properly.

If doing it on the same page, use aria-live="polite" on the container where the message is added so that it'll be read by screen readers automatically.

If you go to a new page, make sure the page <title> is appropriate for the confirmation.

You also might have to think about the "back" button in the browser. If you go back from a separate confirmation page, does that mean you are back on the form and can change values and re-submit it? If you go back from the form that has the confirmation message on it, I assume that would just to back to the page that took you to the form.

So you might have to do a little research and possibly user testing to see which is "better". There might be a "difference" in user experience, but not in accessiblity.

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  • I don't have a good reason to use another page when there's ways to make it work on the same page, so I'll go with the aria-live="polite". However, it says in ARIA Live Regions that role="alert" should be added as a redundancy. I'm actually using Bootstrap which seems to only use role="alert" for alerts - wondering if role="alert" is enough for my form submission success message.
    – chocobanana
    Jan 22, 2019 at 16:02
  • i would strongly recommend not using role="alert" except in cases where you have an urgent message. a confirmation message is just a "nice to have" and shouldn't be an alert. the article you mentioned says to not have it redundant. you almost always only need aria-live="polite" except for critical messages.
    – slugolicious
    Jan 22, 2019 at 20:17

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