- Success Criterion 1.3.5
- Conformance level AA
Autocomplete Section Token Used Incorrectly, Breaking Its Value
1.3.5 — Identify Input Purpose
Scenario
Setting
A coworking-space booking app
What’s wrong
Section-token misuse (section- prefixes) that break token validity.
Example
<label for="street">Billing Street Address</label>
<input id="street" name="billing_street" autocomplete="billing-street-address">Why it matters
A user booking a desk and entering billing details gets no autofill at all, since the malformed section token makes the browser reject the whole autocomplete value.
How to test
Inspect the autocomplete value for section- prefix misuse: malformed section tokens invalidate the whole attribute value — check it against the WCAG token list.
How to fix
Format multi-part autocomplete values as separate, space-separated tokens in the required order, not one hyphenated string.
<label for="street">Billing Street Address</label>
<input id="street" name="billing_street" autocomplete="section-billing street-address">Outcome
A user's browser now correctly distinguishes and autofills their billing address separately from shipping.
Who is affected
Users relying on autofill for billing versus shipping addresses lose it entirely because the section token is not formatted per spec.
Learn more
- Understanding Understanding document (opens in a new tab)
Related scenarios
- Autocomplete Attribute Set to the Wrong Value for the Field
- Personal-Data Field With No Autocomplete Attribute at All
- Autocomplete Deliberately Disabled on a Personal-Data Field
- Autocomplete Token Placed on the Wrong HTML Element
- Custom Form Widget That Drops the Native Autocomplete Behavior
- Login or Checkout Iframe That Strips Out Autocomplete Support