Revisiting Understanding Success Criterion 1.3.5: Identify Input Purpose

All,

A recent thread on WebAIM suggests that our Understanding document isn't
really hitting the mark. Additionally, re-reading our Understanding doc,
nowhere do we note the importance of attaching the meta-data value to make
the input machine-readable, which is also one of the key intents and goals
of this SC, perhaps even more important than "...help people recognize and
understand the purpose of form input fields." - which would have likely
seen this SC recorded as a 3.x.x SC (Understandable) instead.

Unlike "*accessible name*" (which can vary depending on author choices or
internationalization considerations), the meta-data values that are the
autocomplete terms (i.e. the taxonomy) is unambiguous and thus
machine-readable.

For example:

<label for="ThisInput">Почтовый индекс</label> <input type="text"
id="ThisInput" autocomplete="postal-code">


In this example, the *"accessible name"* is Почтовый индекс - which for
Russian screen-reader users is pretty straightforward, but if your
"machine" or software doesn't understand Russian, it can't "do" anything
because all it knows is that it's an input with (or without) an accessible
name. In other words, the *accessible name* is for the end-user, the
taxonomy term is for the machine(s): by tagging the input with a common
taxonomy term, the language of the accessible name is moot to the machine,
it has the "machine-readable" name to work with.

Can we revisit the current language to ensure this distinction is clearer?

Cheers!

JF

-- 
John Foliot
Principal Accessibility Strategist
Deque Systems Inc.
john.foliot@deque.com

Advancing the mission of digital accessibility and inclusion