Re: GitHub issue on checkbox and radio button labels

I’ll start.  I don’t believe that this is required.

A checkbox does need a name (4.1.2 – name, role, value) and that can be addressed with a label, title attribute, or aria attributes.
A checkbox does need visible information that provides a label so people can see what the checkbox is for (3.3.2 – labels or instructions)
1.3.1 (info and relationships) is where it gets tricky and that is the basis of this question.

1.3.1<http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-WCAG20-20081211/#content-structure-separation-programmatic> Info and Relationships: Information, structure<http://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/content-structure-separation-programmatic.html#structuredef>, and relationships<http://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/content-structure-separation-programmatic.html#relationshipsdef> conveyed through presentation<http://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/content-structure-separation-programmatic.html#presentationdef> can be programmatically determined<http://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/content-structure-separation-programmatic.html#programmaticallydetermineddef> or are available in text.

I do think that there is a relationship between the control and the label, and I do agree that using a label with for/id or wrapping the input element makes that programmatically determined.  I also think that one might choose to use aria-labelledby to make that relationship programmatically determinable (of course if the label is right next to the input then you are better off using the native support).

If you use the title attribute, I believe that you are making the relationship available in text and that is sufficient to meet 1.3.1.

I do agree that the ability to click or touch the label text to set focus to the control is valuable, but that seems like a user agent requirement to honor control labelling relationships with that functionality.

What do others on the group think?

Thanks,
AWK

Andrew Kirkpatrick
Group Product Manager, Accessibility
Adobe

akirkpat@adobe.com
http://twitter.com/awkawk

http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility


From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Thursday, November 19, 2015 at 11:36
To: WCAG
Subject: GitHub issue on checkbox and radio button labels
Resent-From: WCAG
Resent-Date: Thursday, November 19, 2015 at 11:37

WCAGers,
Paul Adam raised a question about whether WCAG 2.0 requires that checkboxes and radio buttons have labels which have a programmatic relationship to the control itself and therefore enable the user to click on the label to set focus to the control.

https://github.com/w3c/wcag/issues/122


Any thoughts?

Thanks,
AWK

Andrew Kirkpatrick
Group Product Manager, Accessibility
Adobe

akirkpat@adobe.com<mailto:akirkpat@adobe.com>
http://twitter.com/awkawk

http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility