Re: Bug: Firefox Accessibility Inspector reports placeholder attribute as eligible for accessible name

On 07/08/2018 20:38, John Foliot wrote:
...
> In either case, I will suggest that Firefox is getting it 'wrong' 
> /according to the spec(s)/, but given the prevalence of forms today that 
> are using @placeholder text exclusively to label form inputs, I can 
> understand why *_screen readers_* would ignore the spec in favor of 
> their users, prescribing to the "Priority of Constituents" philosophy of 
> Users over Authors, Authors over Implementors, and Implementors over 
> Code Purity.

Two points here: in general, screen readers will announce what the 
browser exposes via the accessibility API. So I'd wait before blaming 
screen readers. Secondly, Chrome exposes placeholder just the same way 
(can be verified using aViewer or the Accessibility panel in Chrome 
DevTools - an input with just placeholder and nothing else gets an 
accessible name using the placeholder).

> Given the other accessibility concerns around @placeholder text however 
> (noted in the W3C Warning but absent in the WHAT WG text), I would be 
> quite opposed to having the Accessible Name Calculation algorithm 
> changed, and would continue to +1 the bug as submitted to Mozilla.

I, on the other hand, would say the name calculation should take into 
account placeholder (as a last resort, which it currently is, and as an 
additional accessible description in case other better candidated for 
accessible name are present). And browsers should expose it this way. 
Yes, authors are discouraged/outright told not to rely on placeholder as 
the only labelling mechanism. But saying that the algorithm (and 
therefore browsers) should ignore placeholder for its accessible name 
calculation simply means that AT users will then encounter unnamed 
inputs, rather than having the browser at least expose the placeholder 
as a last resort.

P
-- 
Patrick H. Lauke

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Received on Tuesday, 7 August 2018 19:48:37 UTC