Just an FYI for any other potentially confused developers out there: the jQuery Validate plugin’s documentation is out of date as concerns the accept() method: I just spent an hour trying to figure out why accept() it isn’t working… Of course, it works just fine, but I was missing an important piece of the puzzle.

Though the method used to be part of the main validation plugin, this is no longer the case. The method still exists, but it is now part of the additional-methods.js. Accordingly, if you try to use the accept() method without including the extra file, you’re going to see the error message Cannot call method 'call' of undefined in your Javascript console.

The additional-methods.js script is part of the standard zip file download – it’s just not necessarily obvious that you need to include the extra file to make the method work. Hopefully the documentation will get updated soon so others don’t spend a bunch of time trying to figure out why a basic method isn’t working!