Re: HEADERS, FOR whom - any ID?

Leif Halvard Silli wrote:
> But why _haven't_ WHATwg proposed to remove it? FOR/ID and HEADERS/ID 
> are twins - they're there for the same reasons!

Although they are both forms of explicit association, they're not 
included for the same reason.  These are some additional reasons for 
including for="" that do not apply to headers="".

* Allows for labels and controls to be separated, which allows for more 
flexibility in the structure and style of the page.
* Increased usability by allowing users to click on the label to focus 
the control. That's particularly important for checkboxes and radio buttons.
* It is very widely used in reality.

> It is logically inconsistent to keep the one combination that happens 
> to assists sighted persons (FOR/ID), while at the same time propose 
> to remove the one that (due to lack of follow-up of what HTML4 
> actually proposes) _only_ assists visually impaired (HEADERS/ID).

I disagree about it being logically inconsistent because of that rather 
significant difference, but regardless of that, it seems likely that the 
headers attribute will be added in due course.

> Lesson: To make HTML «accessible by design», it would be a good 
> strategy strive to ensure that accessibilty elements/attributes also 
> assists sighted persons.

Yes, whenever possible, that's a reasonable strategy to follow.

-- 
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/

Received on Saturday, 4 August 2007 14:57:05 UTC