Requiring users to view Terms of Service before submitting form contents

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1

Hello,

Most web sites ask you to click “I accept” to their Terms of Service, but a lot of them don’t know if you actually viewed or read their TOS.

I’ve seen some sites take it a step futher, where they don’t let you click Submit on the page, unless you open the TOS in a new window, scroll to the bottom of that page, and click “I accept”.

Only then will the submit button on the main submission page work.

I’ve seen this used on some sites before, but I don’t remember which ones.

Could someone point me in the right direction, in terms of how this could be done?

Thanks

2

As xhtml said, you can make them check the box but that doesn’t guarantee they read it. :slight_smile:

You can use a javascript if statement. Something like:


function checkTS() {

if (document.getElementById('checkboxidvalue').checked) {
document.getElementById("submitbuttonidvalue").disabled = false;}
  else 
    {document.getElementById("submitbuttonidvalue").disabled = true;}
}
3

You’re going to want to use JavaScript as xhtmlcoder suggested. A good idea is to use CSS to create a div that represents the bottom of the TOS, and then use JavaScript to check the offset of the div.

Check this link out, it has a great example of code that does the trick:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2745935/is-there-a-way-to-force-a-user-to-scroll-to-the-bottom-of-a-div

4

You don’t know they read it then either; all you know is they opened a window and scrolled down and hit a button but it sounds like a JavaScript task.

5

Actually, that’s the very reason why it is a good idea to manually review the submissions before accepting them. This way, you will be able to take note which ones did follow the TOS (even if they have not read it) and which ones didn’t.