- From: Mike Scott <mscott2@msfw.com>
- Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 12:38:21 -0500
- To: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
- Cc: "'Andy J. W. Affleck'" <listaccount@raggedcastle.com>
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