RE: Issue 122

+1

This is an accurate summary of the issue(s) discussed, and I support these statements as a consensus view.

 

JF

 

From: Andrew Kirkpatrick [mailto:akirkpat@adobe.com] 
Sent: Friday, December 11, 2015 10:36 AM
To: WCAG <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Subject: CfC: Issue 122
Importance: High

 

CALL FOR CONSENSUS – ends Tuesday December 15 at 11:30am Boston time.

 

Related to Issue 122 in GitHub[1] we believe that the discussion has wide-ranging and productive, but at this point think that we have heard all of the arguments [2][3] and that a consensus opinion has emerged. 

 

The specific question in the GitHub issue is "Please clarify that WCAG's Info & Relationships SC requires that checkboxes and radio buttons have clickable labels, i.e. programmatic "relationship" associations and a title alone will not suffice”

 

The proposed consensus view is that WCAG 2.0 does not require that checkboxes and radio buttons have clickable labels.  The Working Group agrees that there is utility for end users when the labels for these (and other) controls are clickable, but there are no success criteria that make this specific requirement.  

 

Related to this question is whether the page content used as the visible label for the control (in order to meet SC 3.3.2) must be explicitly associated with the control that is being labeled. The proposed consensus view is that the relationship between a control and the content used to label that control may be made implicitly as well as explicitly, and what will really dictate whether SC 1.3.1 (as well as SC 4.1.2) is met is whether the assistive technologies used in the site’s conformance claim are able to provide support for the implicit or explicit relationships provided in the markup. An explicit markup relationship (e.g. Using the HTML for and id attributes to make the association or by enclosing the input within the label element) is preferred as it will increase the likelihood that user agents will support the design pattern and will simplify testing, but implicit relationships may also be supported and as a result may satisfy WCAG 2.0 success criteria.

 

The working group agrees that there is benefit to many users when they can click on a larger area for a checkbox or radio button and on some user agents using the label element in conjunction with an input can make this happen without any work by the page author.  Despite the benefit, this was not part of the original intent of WCAG 2.0, so the working group will forward this issue to the task forces that are currently working on extensions for WCAG 2.0 for review as a topic for consideration within an extension. In addition, this issue will be added to the “Post WCAG 2.0” wiki page[4] for issues that the group wants to keep a record of for consideration in future versions of WCAG.

 

If you have concerns about this proposed consensus position that have not been discussed already and feel that those concerns result in you “not being able to live with” this position, please let the group know before the CfC deadline.

 

[1] https://github.com/w3c/wcag/issues/122

[2] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2015OctDec/0193.html

[3] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2015OctDec/0225.html 

[4] https://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/wiki/Post_WCAG_2_Issues_Sorted 

 

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