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fix(forms-specialist): treat placeholder on a labelled field as a duplicate name - #208
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…licate name A field that has both a label and a placeholder exposes the placeholder as a second child node of the field in the accessibility tree, so JAWS and VoiceOver announce the name twice. Add a Placeholder Is Not a Label section, a FORM-003 finding, and a validation-checklist catch. Based on Chrome's accessibility tree and the Freedom Scientific standards-support tracker.
chrisnestrud
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taylorarndt
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September 29, 2026 01:54
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Summary
A form field that has both an accessible name and a
placeholderexposes theplaceholder as a second child node of the field, so JAWS and VoiceOver announce
the name twice. The skill only warned against using a placeholder as the sole
label, not against leaving one on a field that already has a name.
What changed
skills/forms-specialist/references/labels-the-foundation.md: new"Placeholder Is Not a Label" section (WCAG 4.1.2 / 1.4.3) covering the
duplicate-name case and the described-help fix.
skills/forms-specialist/references/validation-checklist.md: new CommonMistakes entry.
skills/forms-specialist/SKILL.md: reference-list pointer text only, so thebody stays under its budget.
skills/forms-specialist/examples/findings.json: newFORM-003.CHANGELOG.md,skills/a11y-core/references/sources.md,docs/standards/source-registry.json.Source Citations
(placeholder on a labelled textarea) - https://github.com/freedomScientific/standards-support/issues
Verification
node scripts/verify.mjs --only spec,skills,conformance,budgets,findings,report,scanner,release,matrices,docs- all passnode .github/scripts/markdown-a11y-lint.mjs . --regression --baseline-ref main --fail-on error- cleanRefs #207