RE: Error Handling Best Practice?

While not specifically about mobile -- I wrote on a blog on error messages last year that encapsulates what has been discussed here.

http://www.ssbbartgroup.com/blog/how-to-provide-accessible-error-identification/

Happy Holidays!

Jonathan

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From: Alistair Garrison [mailto:alistair.j.garrison@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, December 22, 2015 12:40 PM
To: Patrick H. Lauke
Cc: Michiel Bijl; David MacDonald; Shirisha Balusani; ajaysharma89003@gmail.com; Jonathan Avila; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org List list
Subject: Re: Error Handling Best Practice?

A proposal - for error notifications on small screens.

1) Form data validation occurs on form submission.
2) Post submission, the <label> associated with each form field found to contain an error is altered to include the text "Error:" (as per W3C Tutorial).
3) A sentence is placed at the beginning of the form summarising "the following <named> form contains <x> number of errors".
4) The user's focus is set to this sentence.

This allows screen-reader users navigating in and out of focus to find the form fields with errors.

All the best

Alistair

On 22 Dec 2015, at 17:24, Alistair Garrison wrote:


I've just found this.  http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/26173/what-is-best-practice-for-designing-form-error-messages Which might hold what I'm looking for.

There's also http://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/forms/notifications/, it's just not focused on best methods for small screens.

All the best

Alistair

On 22 Dec 2015, at 17:00, Alistair Garrison wrote:


I cannot use aria.  The range of devices popularly supported when making mobile apps rules it out.  No red herrings - I've been very clear from my first message asking for "old school" success story solutions.

Alistair

On 22 Dec 2015, at 16:45, Patrick H. Lauke wrote:


On 22/12/2015 16:34, Alistair Garrison wrote:
Thanks for the suggestion. It's really the where and how to present the
error message that I suppose I'm searching for - be it:

So your dismissal of aria-describedby earlier in the thread is a red herring then, as that attribute can be used to tie the error message programmatically to the form control - it's orthogonal to where/how to present the message (as it's not a hidden attribute or anything, like aria-label)...

P
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