Re: label placement contradictions

It's sort of funny that the only explicit reason I had for placing the
labels after the "bullet-style" controls was to have the controls and the
text align nicely without having to resort to a layout TABLE or trying to
figure out how to use CSS that would work across the major browsers.  

Strictly speaking, I think the order of placement suggested in the
checkpoint is valid for text boxes and for controls if the author puts more
than one control/label pair on the same scan-line, so I don't think the
checkpoint should be changed.  However, if there is only one control/label
per line, I think the ordering is unimportant since the control and label
are associated by default.

To maintain internal consistency with the guidelines, I guess I should
move the labels to the other side of the controls (lead by example!).
Either that, or I could add a comment to the slide (or an associated page)
explaining why I chose the placement and why it is not necessarily a bad
thing.  I look forward to hearing what Len's colleagues have to say about this.

By the way, in this case an automated accessibility validation tool
hard-coded to the checkpoint would indicate an access-error when one does
not really exist, although I suppose a rule could be written to test for
the exception.

Chuck Letourneau
At 13/06/99 03:54 PM , Leonard R. Kasday wrote:
>Checkpoint 10.2 has labels preceding fields, which make obvious good sense
>for text fields.
>
>However, for radio buttons and checkboxes, which one can think of as
>"bullet" controls because they look like bullets, Chuck's curriculum
>example has the label following the controls.  See
>http://www.starlingweb.com/wai/three/sam75-0.htm
>
>Question: do we change the checkpoint or Chuck's example?
>
>I think we should consider switching to what Chuck has for bullet style
>controls.
>
>The first reason is that  I think first of all that we'll get pushback from
>designers if we want them to reverse the order.
>
>Second of all, since most pages have the fields following bullet style
>controls, it could be that people using screenreaders are accustomed to it,
>even if it's non-optimal, and it would actually be confusing to change.
>
>Eventually, when user agents support associations between form controls and
>labels, the position will not matter.
>
>I suggest that so few pages will go with the order we recommend before that
>time, that we change the recommendation or possibly downgrade to priority 3
>for checkboxes and radio buttons.
>
>What do folks who use screenreaders think?
>
>Please note that I am not suggesting this order for text fields.  Only for
>bullet style controls.
>
>Anyway, I'll be talking with a bunch of webmasters monday.  I'll let you
>know what they think.
>
>Len
>
>
>
>
>-------
>Leonard R. Kasday, Ph.D.
>Universal Design Engineer, Institute on Disabilities/UAP, and
>Adjunct Professor, Electrical Engineering
>Temple University
>
>Ritter Hall Annex, Room 423, Philadelphia, PA 19122
>kasday@acm.org        
>(215} 204-2247 (voice)
>(800) 750-7428 (TTY)
>

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Received on Sunday, 13 June 1999 16:38:42 UTC