- From: Gregory J. Rosmaita <oedipus@hicom.net>
- Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2007 21:58:14 -0400
- To: public-html@w3.org
in the Web Forms 2.0 section 7.11 it is not only written: quote 7.11. Labels Form controls all have a labels DOM attribute that lists all the label elements that refer to the control (either through the for attribute or via containership),in document order. Similarly, HTMLLabelElements have a control DOM attribute that points to the associated element node, if any. A label must be listed in the labels list of the control to which its control attribute points, and no other. unquote then, in a cavalier aside, it is noted: quote Assistive technologies may use the labels attribute to determine what label to read out when a control is focused. An assistive technology could also wish to determine if the element is in a fieldset group. To do so, it should walk up the element's parentNode chain to find the fieldset ancestors. unquote this is insufficient and an enormous step backwards... why? because an assistive technology, such as a screen reader, functions quite like a blind person, not knowing what it is which it has come into contact with, UNLESS that item has an explicit LABEL, belongs to an explicit FIELDSET, whose title is encased in LEGEND. reasoning: 1. an assistive technology cannot be relied upon to correctly infer a FIELDSET; FORM controls MUST be explicitly contained in a FIELDSET; 2. a FIELDSET contains a related grouping of form controls, each one of which needs to be individually labeled. the LEGEND allows a non-visual visitor's assistive technology to contextualize the FORM controls bound to the LEGEND, by virtue of their inclusion in the FIELDSET, there is no way for an assistive technology to associate the nearest header with a form control grouping, unless that header also serves as the LEGEND for the FIELDSET of FORM controls that allow one to "Reply to this Comment".(that, and headers are important for structure and navigation, and it is fitting to use a LEGEND to encase a header. 3. what is needed is an explicit, not implicit, FIELDSET, and where there is a FIELDSET, there must be a LEGEND. 4. when used in a TABLE-ized FORM, an explicit LEGEND allows assistive technologies to associate the LEGEND with the FIELDSET, although anyone who uses TABLE to control presentation is misusing an element that deserves deprecation in HTML5, as a TABLE has meaning only insofar as one can perceive the visual relationships between data and its labels and categorizations. therefore, it is merely a presentational model, better handled - and more appropriately relegated - to CSS. 5. an element should NOT be deprecated due to incompenent unimaginative authoring practices (relying on a browser's default styling for LEGEND and FIELDSET) and/or incomplete implementation on the user agent's part; (this was given to me as a reason why Web Forms 2.0 would be dropping LEGEND and FIELDSET because of default browser styling; this constitutes a failure of imagination and implementation on an author's part, and CAN be handled QUITE easily using the CSS box model) gregory. ---------------------------------------------------------------- CONSERVATIVE, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others. -- Ambrose Bierce, _The Devil's Dictionary_ ---------------------------------------------------------------- Gregory J. Rosmaita, oedipus@hicom.net Camera Obscura: http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/index.html ----------------------------------------------------------------
Received on Sunday, 5 August 2007 01:58:19 UTC