Your text boxes don’t need them — plus, they’re pointless

Accessibility advocates have been saying this for a very long time.

But that hasn’t stopped developers from using placeholders as visual labels. Even Facebook’s home page does this:

As does YouTube:

Placeholders are not labels.

There are so many problems with placeholders from a usability and accessibility standpoint, I don’t think they should ever be used.

Problem #1: Placeholders disappear upon input

You are forcing the user to remember the text of the placeholder. Now that they’ve started typing, the placeholder is gone. The only way to get it back is to remove the text from the text box.

In other words, you are forcing the user to remember the text you decided to hide from them.

Doesn’t it make sense to provide important, relevant information so that it’s always available? Isn’t that more of a priority than your aesthetic sensibilities?

Don’t just make your content easy on the eyes — make it easy on the brain.

Problem #2: Placeholders can appear as pre-populated data

Not everyone uses a web form like you do. Perhaps you read every label, field, and set of instructions. Not everyone does.

Some people are just trying to get through to the next step without the hassle of tediously filling out a form. Therefore, when they see that some fields appear to have text in them (in the form of a placeholder), they’ll skip that control.