Perceivable
1.3.1 Info and Relationships
Structure people can see, such as headings, lists, tables and which label belongs to which field, must also exist in the code so assistive technology can pass it on.
Who it helps
Screen reader users, who move through pages by headings, lists and form labels.
Failures we see most
- Text styled to look like a heading but coded as a plain paragraph
- Data tables without header cells
- Form fields whose labels are not connected to them
How it gets tested
Our scanner runs these 12 axe-core checks for 1.3.1:
| Check | What it looks for |
|---|---|
aria-hidden-body | aria-hidden="true" must not be present on the document body |
aria-required-children | Certain ARIA roles must contain particular children |
aria-required-parent | Certain ARIA roles must be contained by particular parents |
definition-list | <dl> elements must only directly contain properly-ordered <dt> and <dd> groups, <script>, <template> or <div> elements |
dlitem | <dt> and <dd> elements must be contained by a <dl> |
list | <ul> and <ol> must only directly contain <li>, <script> or <template> elements |
listitem | <li> elements must be contained in a <ul> or <ol> |
p-as-heading | Styled <p> elements must not be used as headings |
table-fake-caption | Data or header cells must not be used to give caption to a data table. |
td-has-header | Non-empty <td> elements in larger <table> must have an associated table header |
td-headers-attr | Table cell headers attributes must refer to other <th> elements in the same table |
th-has-data-cells | Table headers in a data table must refer to data cells |
Automated checks can find failures of 1.3.1, but they cannot confirm that a page passes. A specialist still reviews it by hand.
How we fix it
Our tools add names to unlabeled form fields in your code. Structural fixes such as headings and table headers are made by a specialist.
Official text: W3C, Understanding 1.3.1 Info and Relationships. Checks listed from axe-core 4.14.0.
Related criteria
Does your site fail 1.3.1?
Our free scan checks up to 50 of your pages and tells you which criteria fail and where.