WCAG 2.0 Comment Submission

Name: Chris Ridpath
Email: chris.ridpath@utoronto.ca
Affiliation: ATRC University of Toronto
Document: W2
Item Number: content-structure-separation-programmatic
Part of Item: 
Comment Type: technical
Comment (Including rationale for any proposed change):
The Success Criterion (1.3.1 level 1) that calls for the presence of labels is at a different level from the Success Criterion (2.4.5 level 3) that requires the labels actually describe the item. This applies to such items as form labels, headings, titles and table captions. This is an inducement for placeholder text and will functionally decrease accessibility. Examples: web pages with the title \"title goes here\", table captions of \"table caption\" and form control labels \"control name goes here\" are perfectly acceptable. If the requirements for the presence of the label are lower than the requirement than the label actually be descriptive it will be an incentive for authoring programs to put in placeholder text. Requiring that a label be present without a requirement that the label be useful does not make sense.

Proposed Change:
Change the level of SC 2.4.5 to level 1 (same level as SC 1.3.1).

Or remove SC 2.4.5 and modify SC 1.3.1, SC 2.4.3 and any SC that requires text so they include the text from SC 2.4.5. Example: change SC 2.4.3 so it reads \"Web units have titles that describe the web unit\".

Received on Wednesday, 21 June 2006 14:42:08 UTC