Re: Bug: Firefox Accessibility Inspector reports placeholder attribute as eligible for accessible name

Should this be exposed by the browser to the accessibility API as "foo" or not, if there's nothing else giving the input a programmatic name?

It should. But it violates WCAG requirement for VISIBLE label for input, so it is an authoring error, too.

There is a temptation in saying “browsers! Don”t map authoring errors”. But this is like expecting from your camera “don’t photograph this! It’s pathetic”. Such an approach lacks simplicity and makes things difficult to predict from a technical perspective.

The more interesting case is

<input placeholder=“foo” aria-label=“bar” title=“fine”>

How can it be granted that on focus screen readers will speak all three exploiting the API mapping and not using the DOM info?

- Stefan

Von meinem iPad gesendet

Am 07.08.2018 um 22:47 schrieb Patrick H. Lauke <redux@splintered.co.uk<mailto:redux@splintered.co.uk>>:



On 07/08/2018 21:37, Patrick H. Lauke wrote:
...
The reason why placeholder is not advisable as a sole labelling mechanism is because it has usability and accessibility (e.g. for COGA) issues. But is that a reason not to have browsers expose it? Should they expose it only if there's another accessible name, and just as an accessible description? Or not at all?

For that matter, I could make an input with just, say, aria-label, and that gets exposed as the accessible name...e.g. just

<input aria-label="foo">

Should this be exposed by the browser to the accessibility API as "foo" or not, if there's nothing else giving the input a programmatic name?

P
--
Patrick H. Lauke

www.splintered.co.uk<http://www.splintered.co.uk> | https://github.com/patrickhlauke

http://flickr.com/photos/redux/ | http://redux.deviantart.com

twitter: @patrick_h_lauke | skype: patrick_h_lauke