RE: A new one: label vs. Scope

Andy,

With JAWS 4.02 and HPR 3.02, the only practical option seems to be to
use a title attribute on each and every form field. (Neither screen
reader seems to be able to use the table markup - th's with scope="col"
- to identify fields; JAWS' table reading commands don't even work when
in "forms" mode.)

It is unfortunate that HTML doesn't offer a way of assigning multiple
form fields to a single label (and vice versa).

If you do come across a better solution to this problem, please do share
it. (And thanks for the nice synopsis on the last thread.)

Mike 


-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Andy J. W. Affleck
Sent: Monday, April 22, 2002 11:54 AM
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: A new one: label vs. Scope

The developers here are pushing the envelope on forms and what I know so
I have another conundrum on the heels of my last one. But, this time, I
think I already know the answer and just want to check my thinking.

They need a few forms which are tables of data. There is an arbitrary
number of rows (determined at runtime by the system -- this is a
dynamically generated form).

The basis structure (in gorgous ascii) is something like this: (note the
last column is just a series of check boxes)

First name    Last name    SSN          birthdate    title     Reviewed?
[        ]    [       ]    [         ]  [       ]    [    ]    []
[        ]    [       ]    [         ]  [       ]    [    ]    []
[        ]    [       ]    [         ]  [       ]    [    ]    []

Well, obviously, <label> isn't going to work as I only have one row at
the top to provide text for the label and an unknown number of entry
boxes below them. Also, there's no room to add the label text to the
various cells and it would look awful anyway.

So, what have suggested is the following:

1) Don't use the label tag at all. It simply won't work in this context.

2) make sure the top row is set up using TH tags and that each have
scope="col"

My understanding is that browser agents that do the right thing will
then read the row header before each cell achieving the same goal that
the label tag would achieve if it worked in this context.

Is this correct?

Alternately, we could use the title attribute in each form input instead
if that would be more compatible.

Thoughts?

Thanks

-A

-- 
Andy J. Williams Affleck
listaccount@raggedcastle.com http://www.raggedcastle.com/andyjw/

"You can't depend upon your eyes if your imagination is out of focus"
                                             -- Mark Twain

Received on Monday, 22 April 2002 13:44:54 UTC