Skip to content

a11y.form label missing control

github-actions[bot] edited this page Sep 6, 2026 · 2 revisions

a11y.form-label-missing-control

Rule ID: a11y.form-label-missing-control Severity: ERROR Category: a11y Target Standards: W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 SC 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships), W3C WAI-ARIA 1.2 Form Pattern Specifications, Shadcn UI Form Component Architecture Contract


1. Overview & Core Invariant

Enforces that Shadcn UI containing also contains an associated or input element

Core Invariant:

"Every containing a must provide an associated or interactive input element."


2. Technical Grounding & Engine Realities

In component libraries built on Radix UI and React Hook Form (such as Shadcn UI), automatically generates unique IDs and wires to via ARIA attributes.

When developers render a inside a but forget to include (e.g. placing plain text, descriptions, or unassociated elements instead):

  1. Broken Accessibility Tree: Screen reader users hear the label announcement but cannot identify or interact with the corresponding input field.
  2. Silent Failure: React and TypeScript compile cleanly because JSX treats custom components as valid React nodes.
  3. Form Confusion: Tapping the label does not focus any active control.

Charites inspects the component tree of each to guarantee relational completeness.


3. Vulnerability & Risk Taxonomy

Risk Vector Severity Impact
Orphaned Accessible Label HIGH Assistive technology cannot pair the form label with an interactive form control.
Broken Click-to-Focus Affordance MEDIUM Users tapping the label on mobile cannot focus the intended input field.

4. Non-Compliant Code Patterns (Bad Examples)

TSX (FormItem has FormLabel but lacks FormControl or input):

<FormItem>
  <FormLabel>Nama Lengkap</FormLabel>
  <p className="text-sm text-muted-foreground">Silakan hubungi administrator</p>
</FormItem>

5. Compliant Implementation Patterns (Good Examples)

TSX (Proper Shadcn UI FormItem composition with FormControl):

<FormItem>
  <FormLabel>Nama Lengkap</FormLabel>
  <FormControl>
    <Input placeholder="Nama Anda" />
  </FormControl>
</FormItem>

6. Detection & Verification Pipeline (How The Rule Evaluates Code)

This a11y rule evaluates template markup and cross-references resolved design tokens for accessibility:

flowchart TD
    Node["AST Node (Astro / TSX element)"] --> Inspect["1. Inspect Interactive & Semantic Attributes"]
    Inspect --> BindCheck["2. Cross-Reference Form IDs / Labels / ARIA"]
    Inspect --> ContrastCheck["3. Query Token Graph for Foreground & Background Color"]
    ContrastCheck --> Luminance["4. Compute WCAG 2.2 Contrast Ratio"]
    BindCheck --> Invariant{"5. Validate Accessibility Invariant"}
    Luminance --> Invariant
    Invariant -- "Compliant" --> Safe["Pass"]
    Invariant -- "Violation" --> IgnoreCheck{"6. Check charites:ignore directive"}
    IgnoreCheck -- "Ignored" --> Safe
    IgnoreCheck -- "Not Ignored" --> Diag["7. Emit Diagnostic: a11y.form-label-missing-control"]
Loading

Step-by-Step Evaluation:

  1. AST Traversal: Inspects semantic elements, form controls, images, and landmark containers.
  2. Structural & Attribute Invariant Check: Verifies accessible names, heading hierarchies, label/input bindings, and positive tabindex avoidance.
  3. Token-Aware Contrast Verification: If analyzing color classes, queries token.Context to resolve foreground and background values, calculating relative luminance ratios.
  4. Directive Suppression Check: Inspects preceding comments for charites:ignore a11y.form-label-missing-control.
  5. Diagnostic Emission: Emits WCAG-grounded diagnostics for non-compliant patterns.

7. Verification & Test Harness (How The Test Works: 1-SSOT Tri-Corpus)

This rule is rigorously tested and validated across the canonical 1-SSOT Tri-Corpus in tests/correctness/a11y.form-label-missing-control/:

flowchart TD
    subgraph GoldenCorpus ["1-SSOT Tri-Corpus Test Matrix for a11y.form-label-missing-control"]
        subgraph P ["Positive Corpus (tests/correctness/a11y.form-label-missing-control/positive/)"]
            P1["P1: Obvious Direct Violation"]
            P2["P2: Indirect / Variant Concatenation"]
            P3["P3: Helper / clsx / cn Wrapper"]
            P4["P4: Deeply Nested Elements"]
            P5["P5: Aliased Imports / Re-exports"]
        end
        subgraph N ["Negative Corpus (tests/correctness/a11y.form-label-missing-control/negative/)"]
            N1["N1: Valid Design Tokens"]
            N2["N2: Explicit charites:ignore Directive"]
            N3["N3: Third-Party / Vendor Components"]
            N4["N4: Clean Semantic HTML"]
            N5["N5: Untokenized Custom Values (Banana Test)"]
        end
        subgraph A ["Adversarial Corpus (tests/correctness/a11y.form-label-missing-control/adversarial/)"]
            A1["A1: Template Literal Interpolations"]
            A2["A2: Ternary Conditional Expressions"]
            A3["A3: Spread Properties & Dynamic Overrides"]
            A4["A4: Dynamic Object Class Syntax"]
            A5["A5: Shadowed Variable Identifiers"]
            A6["A6: Nested Closures & HOC Wrappers"]
            A7["A7: Obfuscated Classes & Cyclic Tokens"]
        end
    end

    P --> TestRunner["Automated Runner (rule_test.go)"]
    N --> TestRunner
    A --> TestRunner
    TestRunner --> Gates["Quality Gates: Zero Panic, Zero False-Positive, Zero Bypass"]
Loading
  • Positive Fixtures (P1-P5): Verified to trigger diagnostics at exact lines and column spans.
  • Negative Fixtures (N1-N5): Verified to produce zero diagnostics on valid tokens and legitimate exemptions.
  • Adversarial Fixtures (A1-A7): Verified to prevent evasion across dynamic expressions, string interpolations, and cyclic references.

8. How to Suppress (Ignore Directives)

If this pattern is required for an intentional exception, suppress the diagnostic using the canonical Charites Rule ID:

<!-- charites:ignore a11y.form-label-missing-control intentional exception -->
// charites:ignore a11y.form-label-missing-control intentional exception

9. Configuration Reference (charites.yaml)

rules:
  a11y.form-label-missing-control:
    severity: error # error | warn | info | off

Rule Categories

A11y (16 rules)
Browser (12 rules)
Cls (16 rules)
Design (1 rules)
Ergonomy (5 rules)
Inp (16 rules)
Lcp (16 rules)
Mobile (5 rules)
Performance (16 rules)
Pwa (10 rules)
Responsive (18 rules)
Semantic (1 rules)
Theme (32 rules)
Ux (20 rules)

Clone this wiki locally