RE: Placeholder behavior

Ø  like the title attribute which is not meant to be used as an accessible name but as an accessible description, but does get used as fallback accessible name when other sources are not available.

I was under the impression that @title is now an acceptable means for providing accessible names for certain non-text and interactive controls thus moving past fallback to a legitimate accessibility name setter.  This seems to be  supported by the HTML to Platform Accessibility API Mapping Guide and WCAG F65.

IMO something that is used for fallback purposes cannot be relied upon to provide an accessible name for conformance.  Thus, I think our overall message is confusing to people.

Jonathan

From: Steve Faulkner [mailto:faulkner.steve@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, October 07, 2014 10:38 AM
To: Sailesh Panchang
Cc: Andrew Kirkpatrick; Alastair Campbell; Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group
Subject: Re: Placeholder behavior


On 7 October 2014 14:47, Sailesh Panchang <spanchang02@yahoo.com<mailto:spanchang02@yahoo.com>> wrote:
The present algorithm  does refer to attributes like alt, title, aria-label, aria-labelledby and the HTML label explicitly. The "placeholder" attribute which was in the list earlier is the only one that has been stripped out.

the doc is an editors draft, the work is ongoing

The email that started this thread alluded to the HTML5 specs and the accessibility barriers documented there. It says the placeholder is meant to  provide a hint / advisory text and clearly is not a substitute for the label. So I do not understand the rationale for its inclusion in accessible name calculation. It is alright for accessible description at best. And it fails SC 3.3.2 for sure simply because the placeholder is not a label.

The rationale for inclusion as an accessible name is that it is was browsers implement, like the title attribute which is not meant to be used as an accessible name but as an accessible description, but does get used as fallback accessible name when other sources are not available.


Yet, like H65, the placeholder  may be used for single field forms like the search form or say for multi-part  fields like phone# or SSN provided there is a common label like a legend. When a title is used in these situations, SC 3.3.2 is not flagged. If it is a fallback for accessible name in these limited circumstances, it might help to include such examples following the algorithm.
I do not agree that it is okay to use it for login forms for user name and password.

I am not, and have not implied that it is OK or not OK for WCAG conformance.

--

Regards

SteveF
HTML 5.1<http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/>