Check answers

The screen is a list of three-column rows: what was asked, what was answered, and a link that goes back to the one question that answer came from. It sits at the end of a form, after the last question and before the irreversible button, and it is the only place in the flow where everything the reader said is visible at once. The GOV.UK Design System gave it the name most people use, along with the detail that makes it work: the change link goes to the question, not to the start of the form, and answering it returns the reader straight back to the summary.

It exists because of the flow it usually ends. Split a form into one question per page, as a wizard or a stepper does, and nobody ever sees their answers together; each page is a keyhole. The review screen buys that structure back its coherence, which is why the two patterns are almost always found together and why a single-page form usually does not need one. It also catches the specific error a long flow produces: not a malformed field, which validation already caught, but a plausible answer given to the wrong question six pages ago.

Do not confuse it with the page after the button. A confirmation page tells the reader what happened and gives them a reference number, and by then nothing can be edited. The review screen is the last moment where editing is still free, and the distinction is worth being pedantic about, because a service that shows a summary after submitting has given the reader a receipt while calling it a review.

The craft is mostly restraint. Show every answer, including the ones left blank, because a missing row is invisible and a row reading “Not provided” is not. Make each change link name its own row (Change name, not five links all reading Change), or a screen reader hears the same word five times with nothing to distinguish them. Keep the reader’s place: coming back from a change lands on the summary, ideally on the row that was just edited. And put the consequences next to the button, since this is the screen where a declaration or a payment total belongs rather than in a footnote earlier in the flow.