Placeholder behavior

• From: Sailesh Panchang <spanchang02@yahoo.com>
• Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2014 12:08:25 -0700
• To: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
• Message-ID: <1412622505.32011.YahooMailBasic@web122101.mail.ne1.yahoo.com>

JAWS 14/15 and NVDA  read the placeholder label even after entering text into the text field  in Firefox32 and IE11. VoiceOver in Ios 7 does not do so.
So for instance in the following code, the placeholder "Account number:"  though not visible, is announced by JAWS and NVDA even when some text is present in the field.
<p><input type="text" placeholder="Account Number:" size="7" /></p>
(Note: There is no text  outside the input element that funtcions  like a label). 
NVDA does not read it  when arrowing through the content (i.e. out of forms mode) when there's data in the field.
HTML5 specs clearly states using placeholder as a label poses accessibility problems. 
But thought I'll note this interesting behavior with screen readers.
Sailesh

Received on Monday, 6 October 2014 19:11:41 UTC