[Bug 13549] New: associating form elemnents with forms that do not contain them can cause navigation problems for AT and keyboard users

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=13549

           Summary: associating form elemnents with forms that do not
                    contain them can cause navigation problems for AT and
                    keyboard users
           Product: HTML WG
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: PC
        OS/Version: Windows NT
            Status: NEW
          Keywords: a11y, a11ytf
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: HTML5 spec (editor: Ian Hickson)
        AssignedTo: ian@hixie.ch
        ReportedBy: cyns@microsoft.com
         QAContact: public-html-bugzilla@w3.org
                CC: mike@w3.org, public-html-wg-issue-tracking@w3.org,
                    public-html@w3.org


What is the use case for associating a form element with a differnt form than
the one that contains it?  The spec says this is to work around lack of support
for nested forms, but what is the use case for nested forms?

When an element is associated with a different form than the one that contains
it, it will cause behavior that the user will not expect.  This will be
particularly problematic for screen reader users, because the screen reader
reading order follows the DOM order, not the specified form relationships. 
Similarly, without significant work by authors, keyboard tab order will not
match either.  

This feature seems likely to introduce author errors, without clear benefit. 
Instead, nested forms should be considered an author error.  Browser behavior
for handling this error can be specified, but we should not add features to
handle it.

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Received on Wednesday, 3 August 2011 01:12:45 UTC