Re: Placeholder behavior

On 7 October 2014 14:47, Sailesh Panchang <spanchang02@yahoo.com> wrote:

> The present algorithm  does refer to attributes like alt, title,
> aria-label, aria-labelledby and the HTML label explicitly. The
> "placeholder" attribute which was in the list earlier is the only one that
> has been stripped out.
>

the doc is an editors draft, the work is ongoing

>
> The email that started this thread alluded to the HTML5 specs and the
> accessibility barriers documented there. It says the placeholder is meant
> to  provide a hint / advisory text and clearly is not a substitute for the
> label. So I do not understand the rationale for its inclusion in accessible
> name calculation. It is alright for accessible description at best. And it
> fails SC 3.3.2 for sure simply because the placeholder is not a label.
>

The rationale for inclusion as an accessible name is that it is was
browsers implement, like the title attribute which is not meant to be used
as an accessible name but as an accessible description, but does get used
as fallback accessible name when other sources are not available.




> Yet, like H65, the placeholder  may be used for single field forms like
> the search form or say for multi-part  fields like phone# or SSN provided
> there is a common label like a legend. When a title is used in these
> situations, SC 3.3.2 is not flagged. If it is a fallback for accessible
> name in these limited circumstances, it might help to include such examples
> following the algorithm.
> I do not agree that it is okay to use it for login forms for user name and
> password.
>

I am not, and have not implied that it is OK or not OK for WCAG conformance.

--

Regards

SteveF
HTML 5.1 <http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/>