RE: Tests 186, 187, 188, 189,

Hi Roberto,

At 17:56 10/08/2005, Roberto Scano - IWA/HWG wrote:

>-----Original Message-----
>From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On Behalf
>Of Yvette Hoitink
>Sent: Wednesday, August 10, 2005 5:40 PM
>To: 'WCAG WG mailing list'
>Subject: RE: Tests 186, 187, 188, 189,
>
>
>
>David MacDonald recommended to accept HTML test 187:
>INPUT element must have only one associated LABEL. [1]
>
>Are there any accessibility problems with having two labels associated with
>the same input element? To me it would that problems only occur if the wrong
>label is associated, but that's true if only 1 label is associated as well.
>Multiple labels are permitted by the HTML spec and used wisely it can
>actually benefit accessibility. Based on this, I would like to reject this
>test.
>
>Roberto Scano:
>There is a problem for label esplicit association. The "for" attribute refer
>to the ID and HTML spec don't authorize to use more than one ID per page.

I think there is a misunderstanding here: the issue is not whether a label can
be associated with more than one form control (it can't) but whether more than
one label can be associated with the same form control. This is allowed by the
HTML 4 specification
(http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/interact/forms.html#edef-LABEL):

   "The for attribute associates a label with another control explicitly:
   the value of the 
<http://localhost/www/www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/interact/forms.html#adef-for>for 
attribute must be the same as the value of the 
<http://localhost/www/www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/struct/global.html#adef-id>id 
attribute
   of the associated control element. More than one 
<http://localhost/www/www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/interact/forms.html#edef-LABEL>LABEL 
may be associated with
   the same control by creating multiple references via the 
<http://localhost/www/www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/interact/forms.html#adef-for>for 
attribute."

(For a label to be associated with more than one form control, the HTML DTD 
would
need to be changed: "for" would need to have the type IDREFS instead of IDREF.)

Regards,

Christophe Strobbe



-- 
Christophe Strobbe
K.U.Leuven - Departement of Electrical Engineering - Research Group on 
Document Architectures
Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 - 3001 Leuven-Heverlee - BELGIUM
tel: +32 16 32 85 51
http://www.docarch.be/

Received on Wednesday, 10 August 2005 16:18:50 UTC