Specify Field Requirement When Creating Form

I am building a questionnaire form. As part of the question model I can explicitly state that the question must be answered or not (on the whole), but I want the person who inputs the questions to specify requirement on a per question basis. How do I specify requirement for a series of (in this case) questions with some required and some not? I want the validation to appear on the client side so they have the immediate feedback. I can handle the server side OK, its just the client side I am struggling with.

It would be nice if it were as easy as $form->field($question, ‘answer’)->radioList([‘clientValidation’ => false]);

But of course it is not. :(

Any other options?