RE: Action item: Phone number example

If you are going to use examples related to US formats for telephone
numbers, please put a note in to say that designers should only try to split
up and recognise separate parts of a telephone number if they have very good
reasons for doing so. And if they feel they do, they must take on board that
such an arrangement of fields will only work for websites that are never
used outside the US, or by US citizens entering their US-based phone
numbers.  For people outside the USA the form will need to be localized or
(probably more likely) generalised to a single field.
 
I have far too often come across websites that prevent me from entering my
phone number - often disabling my use of the entire form submission process!

 
It would be much safer to use a non-US example here, so the US designers get
the idea that they need to be careful with this.
 
hth
RI
 
============
Richard Ishida
Internationalization Lead
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
 
http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/
http://www.w3.org/International/
http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/
 
 


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From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On Behalf
Of Michael Cooper
Sent: 04 May 2007 17:10
To: List WAI GL
Subject: Action item: Phone number example


Here is my action
<http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2007/05/03-wai-wcag-minutes.html#item11> item on
phone number format example, which has been approved by Sean. Here's my
proposed revision:


A U.S. phone number separates the area code, exchange, and number into three
fields. Parentheses surround the area code field, and a dash separates the
exchange and number fields. While the punctuation provides visual clues to
those familiar with the U.S. telephone number format, the punctuation is not
sufficient to label the fields. The single "Phone number" label also cannot
label all three fields. To address this, the three fields are grouped in a
<fieldset> with the <legend> "Phone number". Visual labels for the fields
(beyond the punctuation) cannot be provided in the design, so invisible
labels are provided with the "title" attribute to each of the three fields.
The value of this attribute for the three fields are, respectively, "Area
Code", "Exchange", and "Number". 


Michael

-- 


Michael Cooper
Web Accessibility Specialist
World Wide Web Consortium, Web Accessibility Initiative
E-mail cooper@w3.org <mailto:cooper@w3.org> 
Information Page <http://www.w3.org/People/cooper/> 


-- 


Michael Cooper
Web Accessibility Specialist
World Wide Web Consortium, Web Accessibility Initiative
E-mail cooper@w3.org <mailto:cooper@w3.org> 
Information  <http://www.w3.org/People/cooper/> Page