Medium impact · weight 5 · worth up to 2.7 points of the total score
A screen reader announces a field by its label. Without one it says "edit text" and the user has to guess what goes in it. A placeholder is not a label: it disappears as soon as someone types, and many screen readers do not read it.
Put a <label for="id"> next to each field, or wrap the field in its label. Where a visible label does not fit the design, use aria-label.
Check a page for this, and the other 70 checks at once
Links have discernible text
A link that holds only an icon or an image without alt text is announced as "link" followed by its address, or nothing at all. Search engines read link text too: it is how they learn what the target page is about.
Users can zoom the page
Disabling zoom locks out everyone who needs to magnify text. On modern browsers it buys nothing in return.
Lighthouse accessibility score
Google runs the axe accessibility rules against the page as a phone renders it: colour contrast, names on controls and links, labels on form fields, alt text, headings and landmarks. The score is the weighted share of those rules the page passes. Accessibility is also law in more places each year, including the European Accessibility Act since June 2025.
Buttons have accessible names
A button whose only content is an icon announces itself to a screen reader as just "button", which tells the user nothing about what pressing it will do.
