UX Patterns Guide
spec 29 linked patterns checked

WCAG 2.2 Understanding Success Criterion 4.1.3: Status Messages

Explains that status messages should be programmatically determinable so assistive technologies can announce changes in content without moving focus.

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  2. Trace the connection. Use the claim notes below to see how this site applies the source to specific patterns.
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Pattern Decisions This Source Supports

Pattern Supported decision Required contract Claim note
Agent plan preview Choose agent plan preview when an AI agent's proposed multi-step execution needs review before it starts. The preview names the objective, plan version, source context, model or workflow instructions, planned tools, and expected output before run. Supports announcing plan updates, blocked steps, validation, and run-start status changes.
Agent progress trace Choose agent progress trace when an agent or automation run has started and users need live status across multiple steps or tools. The trace belongs to one run ID, reviewed plan version, objective, actor, start time, current state, and final state. Supports announcing meaningful status changes without moving focus.
AI agent acts without approval Flag this anti-pattern when an AI agent or automation executes a high-impact side effect without showing and requiring approval for the exact action and payload first. The agent distinguishes read-only steps, draft steps, reversible local changes, and external side-effect steps before execution. Supports announcing approval-required, stale, executed, rollback, and recovery states without moving focus.
AI answer without sources Flag this anti-pattern when an AI answer makes evidence-dependent claims and provides no source link, citation marker, grounding panel, source scope, or verification action. Evidence-dependent answers must expose whether sources were searched, retrieved, used, unavailable, permission-limited, failed, or not required. Supports announcing changed source status without moving focus.
AI confidence shown as fake precision Flag this anti-pattern when an AI or automated surface shows a precise score without calibration scope, decision threshold, freshness, uncertainty reason, or safe next action. The interface distinguishes raw internal scores from user-facing calibrated confidence. Supports announcing changed confidence validity, calibration, and review states without moving focus.
Alert Choose alert when a time-sensitive warning, error, or important status change must be noticed immediately without moving focus. The alert appears close to the task area whose outcome it affects and before the controls users need next. WCAG status-message guidance supports announcing content changes without changing focus.
Automation rule builder Choose automation rule builder when the primary job is authoring a reusable rule with trigger, condition, action, activation, and future runtime behavior. The rule cannot be activated until trigger, condition, action, owner, permissions, and required validation pass. Supports accessible validation, test, activation, failure, and run-status messages.
Chat interface Choose chat interface when the user task depends on turn-taking, follow-up prompts, assistant responses, and conversation history rather than a single request field. Every user-visible answer is tied to the exact user message and visible context that produced it. Supports announcing response status, errors, copied state, and history changes without moving focus.
Citation display Choose citation display when the main user need is verifying a generated or summarized claim against the source that supports it. Each citation marker opens or focuses the source record that supports the adjacent claim. Supports announcing citation status changes without moving focus.
Confidence / uncertainty display Choose confidence / uncertainty display when users need to judge prediction reliability before acting on AI or automation output. The display names the task, prediction, source of the confidence estimate, calibration scope, and last calibration or update time when available. Supports status announcements for changed uncertainty, review, and blocked-action states.
Correction feedback Choose correction feedback when users need to correct AI output, source use, assumptions, recommendations, safety behavior, or answer quality after an AI response is shown. A correction feedback action preserves answer ID, response version, claim span, source ID, user reason, expected correction, submitter, timestamp, and chosen scope. Supports accessible feedback submission, receipt, and review status changes.
Disabled controls without recovery Flag this anti-pattern when a disabled control blocks a task and the surrounding UI does not provide a reachable next step. Users can discover the cause of unavailability without activating or hovering the disabled control itself. Status message guidance supports perceivable updates when disabled or blocked states change.
Editable AI output Choose editable AI output when the primary object is generated output after creation and users need to revise, review, save, copy, or apply that output. The generated draft, user edits, tracked changes, source mappings, citations, review status, and final output state are modeled as distinct data rather than one mutable text blob. Supports accessible announcements for review, save, regeneration, and apply states.
Escalate to human Choose escalate to human when users need a route from AI, automation, chatbot, self-service, or failed recovery to a human channel or queue. The escalation action names the human destination and whether it is live, asynchronous, specialist, supervisor, emergency, or review-only. Supports accessible escalation, queue, transfer, ticket, and failure status announcements.
Fake undo Flag this anti-pattern when an Undo control does not restore the exact object, value, order, relationship, permission, selection, and visible status it claims to reverse. The system captures reversible state before applying the action, not after users request undo. WCAG status-message guidance supports exposing recovery and final states without relying on focus movement.
Human approval gate Choose human approval gate when automation is paused at runtime and cannot execute the next step until an eligible human authorizes it. The gate belongs to a specific automation run, step ID, payload version, model or workflow version, target object, and approver rule. Supports announcing gate pause, approval, rejection, timeout, and resumed-run states.
Inline message Choose inline message when the message's subject is a visible local object or section and the feedback should stay attached to it. The message appears in the visual and reading order near the object or section it describes. WCAG status-message guidance supports announcing status changes without changing the user's context.
Model update notice Choose model update notice when users need to understand and act on AI model lifecycle, version, capability, deprecation, retirement, replacement, migration, or auto-upgrade changes. The notice identifies the current model and replacement or new model in user-visible text. Supports accessible announcement of update, migration, test, completion, and failure status changes.
Notification banner Choose notification banner when a service message should be seen immediately before the page heading and before users interpret that page. The banner appears before the page H1 and in the same content width as the heading and body text. WCAG status-message guidance supports announcing important status changes programmatically without moving focus when the message does not require focus.
Pull to refresh Choose pull to refresh when the design problem is the vertical top-of-scroll drag that refreshes the current data set. Pull-to-refresh begins only when the intended scroll container is at its top boundary and the user drags downward beyond normal scroll tolerance. Supports programmatically determinable refresh status updates without moving focus.
Regenerate / retry Choose regenerate / retry when the task is rerunning an AI response attempt, creating a new answer version, continuing a failed generation, or recovering from failed AI source or tool work. Retry same prompt repeats the submitted prompt and visible context unless the UI explicitly shows which context changed. Supports accessible announcements for retry, regeneration, cooldown, and version status changes.
Scope clarification Choose scope clarification when the AI needs a missing boundary before producing a reliable answer, plan, retrieval query, or tool action. The system identifies what boundary is missing before asking the user to clarify. Supports accessible status updates for clarification and resume states.
Site alert Choose site alert when urgent sitewide information must appear by default on every affected page near the top of the site. The site alert appears before ordinary page content and is reachable from any affected route, not just the home page. WCAG status-message guidance supports programmatic announcement of important dynamic site-alert updates without unnecessary focus movement.
Source grounding display Choose source grounding display when users need answer-wide evidence coverage, source scope, retrieved-versus-used source status, or unsupported-claim visibility. The grounding display names the source scope that was available for this answer, not just sources the user might expect. Supports announcing grounding state changes without moving focus.
Streaming response Choose streaming response when partial generated output is useful before the full answer is ready and the product can explain partial versus final state. The UI never presents an active stream as a complete answer until the terminal event or final validation state arrives. Supports accessible stream milestone announcements without forced focus movement.
Success confirmation Choose success confirmation when the user needs durable in-context proof that a just-completed action succeeded. The confirmation appears only after the action is committed enough to be truthful. WCAG status-message guidance supports announcing success state changes without moving focus.
Toast notification Choose a toast for short non-blocking confirmation, progress handoff, background-job status, or low-risk warning that does not require users to stop the current task. A toast appears because a specific action or system event occurred, not as the only visible structure for the task itself. WCAG status-message guidance supports programmatic announcement of status updates without moving focus.
Toast-only success for completed transaction Flag this anti-pattern when a committed or high-consequence transaction is confirmed only by a disappearing toast. The completed transaction remains provable after the toast expires. Supports announcing dynamic status without moving focus while preserving visible confirmation where proof is required.
Tool-use visibility Choose tool-use visibility when users need to inspect exact tool names, purposes, inputs, outputs, permissions, side effects, failures, or redactions. Each tool-use item identifies one tool call or tool-call attempt with stable call ID, run ID, step ID, tool name, status, timestamp, and permission scope. Supports announcing meaningful tool status changes without moving focus.

Comparisons supported by this source

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Publisher: W3C WAI. Last checked: .

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