I am being asked to put checkboxes on a webpage that perform no resolution, in that they simply exist to be checked in the form of a checklist that could be printed. There would be no form submission, no buttons, no popups or collapses, and no actions resulting in the checking of the boxes.
I believe this would be against the grain for UX and potentially against accessibility rules. Are there any rules I can reference in the WCAG guidelines that would back me up?
A couple of things to consider:
If the checkboxes perform a function in that they allow the user to check off which items are completed, then they are there for a reason but it's a question of whether their purpose has been clearly communicated.
From what you describe, non-accessibility users would be getting the same non-functioning checkboxes that accessibility users get, so accessibility is less of a consideration here than UX design. Accessibility is concerned with providing an equivalent user experience and conveying the same information for assistive technology users as for non-AT users, so quoting a WCAG guideline won't really help if the design problem affects both AT and non-AT users.
With that in mind, the WCAG guideline that seems most relevant to me is 1.3.1 - Info and relationships. This guideline deals with preserving the relationship between page information and the semantic structure or layout of a page, so that the way a page is structured (including the components used) doesn't convey different things to AT and non-AT users.
A common failure of WCAG 1.3.1 would be something like using headings for presentational purposes, but it can apply to any component which has a semantic meaning that is different from the presentational meaning. In your case, using checkboxes as a presentational device could fall under that type of failure. See here: https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Techniques/failures/F43
The situation is a bit unclear. The checkboxes are there to be checked, but there is no action that could result in them being checked. That seems to be a contradiction.
In any case, I believe it causes no accessibility issue to include checkboxes on a web page, regardless of whether they are in a submittable form. There could be good reasons to do so. For example, if there are 10 checkboxes and the instruction tells the user to check no more than 4 of them, a script could enforce that requirement. Whether the purpose is to let the user print the page, or save it as a PDF file, or send a PDF version by email, or think about a topic, checkable checkboxes can be useful, and I know of no basis for an inference that they must be submittable to a server.
