The Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) Photometric H-Alpha Survey (IPHAS) is a 1800deg^2^ survey of the Northern Galactic Plane, reaching down to r'~21. We demonstrate how the survey can be used to (1) reliably select classical T Tauri star candidates and (2) constrain the mass accretion rates with an estimated relative uncertainty of 0.6dex. IPHAS is a necessary addition to spectroscopic surveys because it allows large and uniform samples of accretion rates to be obtained with a precise handle on the selection effects. We apply the method on a region of 7deg^2^ towards the HII region IC 1396 in Cepheus OB2 and identify 158 pre-main-sequence candidates with masses between 0.2 and 2.0M_{sun}_ and accretion rates between 10-9.2 and 10-7.0M_{sun}_/yr.