Skip to main content
Formbricks is used to ask people questions. A survey that some people cannot answer is a survey that returns incomplete data, so accessibility is not a compliance exercise for us — it is part of the product working correctly. This page describes the accessibility of the public survey UI: the interface a respondent sees when they open a link survey or are shown a website or in-app survey. It covers what already works, what does not, and how to reach us.
This page covers the respondent-facing survey UI only. The Formbricks application that survey creators use to build surveys, and the self-hosting and administration interfaces, have not been assessed to the same standard and are not described here.

Standards We Measure Against

Formbricks assesses the public survey UI against two standards: Our assessment is published as a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) using the VPAT 2.5Rev, Revised Section 508 Edition format. The most recent report was completed on 9 August 2026. To request the full report, ask in GitHub Discussions.

Conformance Status

The public survey UI partially conforms to WCAG 2.0 Level AA. Partial conformance means that most of the standard is met, but some content does not fully conform. The known gaps are listed under Known Limitations below. We publish them rather than summarising them away, because a procurement team or an individual respondent needs to know what will not work before they rely on it, not after.
Some gaps recorded in the 9 August 2026 report have since been fixed in the codebase and will ship in the next release. Those entries are marked Fixed, not yet released below and still read as Does Not Support in the report, which predates the fix. If you are assessing a released version, treat the report as authoritative for that version.

Accessibility Features

Everything in this table was assessed as supported in the most recent report.
Website and in-app surveys have an optional auto-close setting that dismisses an unanswered survey prompt after a set number of seconds. It applies only to the first screen, and the countdown is cancelled as soon as the respondent interacts with the survey in any way — including with the keyboard. It does not impose a time limit on answering, and it does not apply to link surveys. While the countdown runs it is shown as a shrinking progress bar, which animates for as long as the creator configured — so a survey with auto-close enabled does carry one automatic animation, and it can last longer than five seconds.

Known Limitations

The following were assessed as not conforming. Each entry states what a respondent experiences and what a survey creator can do about it. Entries marked Fixed, not yet released have been addressed in the codebase since the report was written and will ship in the next release; their workarounds still apply to released versions.

Embedded Third-Party Video

Affected criteria: 1.2.1, 1.2.2, 1.2.3, 1.2.5 Formbricks lets survey creators embed a video from YouTube, Vimeo, or Loom into a question. Formbricks provides no way to upload a transcript, add captions, or supply an audio description or text alternative for that video. A respondent who is deaf, hard of hearing, blind, or has low vision may not be able to access information that is only presented in the video. Adding captions on the hosting platform does not fully close the gap either, because Formbricks reduces the embedded player’s controls: Every video carries an Open in new tab control in its bottom-right corner. It is reachable by keyboard and becomes visible when it has focus, and it opens the video in the platform’s own player, where captions, transcripts, and full playback controls are available. For a YouTube or Vimeo video, that is currently the only route a respondent has to turn captions on. Workaround: Repeat the essential information as text in the question headline or description — that is the part that always works. Do not put information in a video that a respondent needs in order to answer the question, unless that information also appears as text. Add captions and a transcript on the hosting platform as well: for YouTube and Vimeo they will not be reachable from the embedded player, but they will be there for a respondent who opens the video in its own tab.

Page Titles and Survey Instructions

Affected criterion: 2.4.2 — Fixed, not yet released As assessed, surveys carried no form title and survey instructions were not repeated after the welcome card, so a respondent using a screen reader was not given a clear description of the page they were on. A link survey now sets its document title per step, appending the respondent’s position — “Page 3 of 7” — to the survey’s own title, localized in the survey’s language. Where a survey has instructions, they are kept reachable on every page instead of disappearing once the respondent advances past the welcome card. The per-step document title applies to link surveys, which own the page they are shown on. A website or in-app survey is embedded in a page belonging to the site that shows it, and does not change that page’s title. Workaround for released versions: Write question headlines that make sense on their own, without depending on a title or on instructions given earlier in the survey.

Current Language Not Identified in the Language Switcher

Affected criterion: 3.1.1 — Fixed, not yet released As assessed, the language switcher was an unlabelled globe: it listed the available languages but gave no indication of which one was active, so neither a sighted nor a screen-reader respondent could tell what language the survey was being presented in. The switcher now names the active language, in that language rather than in translation — “Deutsch”, not “German” — both visibly and in its accessible name. Each option in the list carries its own language tag, so a screen reader pronounces every language name using that language’s rules. Workaround for released versions: For link surveys, the lang URL parameter sends a respondent straight to the correct language, so they do not need to use the switcher. See Multi-language Surveys.

Semantic Headings

Affected criterion: 2.4.6 — Fixed, not yet released As assessed, the survey UI used no semantic heading elements, so a respondent using a screen reader could not navigate the survey by heading and question headlines were not exposed as headings. The survey now has a heading structure: the survey name is its single top-level heading, and card headlines — the welcome card, each question prompt, and the ending — are second-level headings beneath it. A respondent can navigate the survey by heading and knows what they are answering. Workaround for released versions: Keeping surveys short and putting one question on each screen reduces the amount of navigation a respondent has to do.

Language of Parts

Affected criterion: 3.1.2 Formbricks declares the survey’s language for the survey as a whole, and only when the survey has languages configured. Where a survey uses the multi-language feature, its root element carries a lang attribute resolved from the active language, updated when the respondent uses the language switcher — so an embedded survey shown in a language other than its host page’s is still announced correctly, without Formbricks altering the page it is embedded in. Link surveys additionally set lang and dir on the page’s <html> element, so right-to-left languages read in the right direction. A survey that does not use the multi-language feature has no configured language for Formbricks to resolve from, so it declares no language of its own. It inherits whatever the surrounding page declares — the respondent’s app locale for a link survey, or the host site’s lang for an embedded one. A survey written in one language and opened where the page declares another is then announced using the wrong pronunciation rules. The workaround is to enable the multi-language feature and set the survey’s language explicitly, even for a survey that only ever needs one. What a survey creator cannot do is mark up an individual passage. There is no way to set a language on a single question, description, label, or choice option, and the language switcher’s own options are the only individually tagged text in the survey. So where one screen mixes languages — an English question with an untranslated choice option, or a term left in its original language — the part in the other language is not programmatically identified, and a screen reader may pronounce it using the wrong language rules. Workaround: Keep every part of a question in one language, and use the multi-language feature to offer the whole survey in each language rather than mixing languages inside a single question.

Compatibility

The survey UI is built as a standard web application. It requires no plugin, no extension, and no separate accessible version, and it targets current versions of Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari on desktop and on mobile. Our automated browser tests run on Chromium only, so the other engines are a design target rather than a tested guarantee.

How the Assessment Was Carried Out

The most recent evaluation combined automated and manual testing:
  • IBM Equal Access Accessibility Checker — automated rule-based scanning
  • ANDI (Accessible Name & Description Inspector) — inspection of accessible names, descriptions, and roles
  • Manual testing — keyboard-only operation, focus order, and visual inspection

Assistive Technology

We have not formally tested the survey UI against specific named combinations of assistive technology and browser — for example a particular screen reader paired with a particular browser version. We do not claim support for combinations we have not evidenced. If you use a specific assistive technology and hit a barrier in a Formbricks survey, we want to hear about it. See Contact below.

Requesting This Documentation in Another Format

This page and the full accessibility report are available in alternate formats on request, at no charge. If the format here does not work for you, tell us which format you need and we will provide it. See Contact below.

Contact

For accessibility questions about Formbricks, to request the full accessibility report, to ask for this documentation in another format, or to report an accessibility barrier in the survey UI, reach us in GitHub Discussions. If you are a survey respondent and you cannot complete a survey that someone has sent you, contact the organisation that sent you the survey — they own the survey content and can offer you another way to respond. You are also welcome to raise it with us so we can fix the underlying barrier.

Guidance for Survey Creators

Formbricks handles the parts of accessibility that belong to the survey UI. The content you put into a survey is yours, and it decides whether the finished survey is usable. The following practices make a measurable difference. Write question headlines that stand on their own. A respondent using a screen reader may hear the headline without the surrounding context. “How satisfied were you with the onboarding call?” works; “And this one?” does not. Do not put information only in an image. Formbricks does not currently offer a field for image alt text, so an image cannot carry information on its own. Treat images as illustration and put anything a respondent needs in order to answer into the headline or the description. Do not convey meaning with colour alone. If a rating scale, an option, or an instruction depends on a respondent seeing red versus green, add a label, a number, or a word that carries the same meaning. Caption your videos on the hosting platform, and summarise them as text. See Embedded Third-Party Video above. Set the survey language correctly. Choose the right default language and add translations for every language you send the survey in, so that assistive technology pronounces the content correctly. See Multi-language Surveys. Leave the Back button enabled. It is on by default, and it is what allows a respondent to review and correct an answer before submitting. Turn it off only when the survey design genuinely requires it — for example a quiz where going back would let a respondent change an answer after seeing the result. See Hide Back Button. Keep questions short and ask one thing at a time. This helps every respondent, and it particularly helps people using screen readers, screen magnification, or switch access, who move through content more slowly.