Re: Question on labels

At Sidar we believe that the requirement to have default place holder  
text in search fields no longer holds, and causes some usability  
problems for people with motor disabilities. Although we have not been  
able to get a response from the WCAG group as to whether or not they  
believe that checkpoint 10.3 - Until user agents handle empty controls  
correctly, include default, place-holding characters in edit boxes and  
text areas [1] - applies we would therefore suggest the following:

<label for="inputField">Search W3C<input type="...." etc="etc"  
/></label>

(We would also recommend not putting the search into the taborder with  
a tabindex different to the one it would naturally get - i.e. in order  
to change its tab ordering, move it on the page).

> <input type="text" accesskey="E" size="15" tabindex="1"
> id="inputField" name="q" maxlength="255" value="Search W3C" />

I'm interested in your view on this approach.

cheers

Chaals

[1]  
http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/wai-pageauth.html#tech-place-holders

On Friday, Jun 6, 2003, at 03:02 Europe/Zurich, Susan Lesch wrote:

> Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>
>> I wondered why there is a label used to identify the form controls  
>> such as the search field which does not provide any actual labelling,  
>> just an accesskey which could be attached directly to the form  
>> control in question?
>
> Thanks for the idea, Charles. The labels were added in revision 4.716
> when the tables were removed in favor of CSS. It's been a while but
> think I copied them from WDG. Did I get them wrong?
>
> From http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/forms/label.html
>
> <P>
>   <LABEL ACCESSKEY=S>
>     <INPUT TYPE=checkbox NAME=save VALUE=yes>
>     Save user name and password in a cookie
>   </LABEL>
> </P>
>
> Does this look better?
>
> <form method="get" action="http://www.google.com/custom">
> <div><a class="navlink" href="http://www.google.com"><img
> src="Icons/Logo_25wht.gif" width="75" height="32"
> alt="Google" /></a><br />
> <input type="text" accesskey="E" size="15" tabindex="1"
> id="inputField" name="q" maxlength="255" value="Search W3C" />
> <input type="submit" accesskey="G" value="Go" tabindex="2"
> id="goButton" name="sa" /><br />
> <input type="hidden" name="cof"
> value="T:black;LW:72;ALC:#ff3300;L:http://www.w3.org/Icons/ 
> w3c_home;LC:#000099;LH:48;BGC:white;AH:left;VLC:#660066;GL:0;AWFID:0b98 
> 47e42caf283e;" />
> <input type="hidden" id="searchW3C" name="sitesearch" checked="checked"
> value="w3.org" /><input type="hidden" name="domains"
> value="w3.org" /></div>
> </form>
>
> -- 
> Susan Lesch           http://www.w3.org/People/Lesch/
> mailto:lesch@w3.org               tel:+1.858.483.4819
> World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)    http://www.w3.org/
>

Received on Sunday, 8 June 2003 19:12:36 UTC