Re: A new one: label vs. Scope

> As for assigning multiple labels to a single element,
> I don't see why anyone would want to do that.
> Can anyone think of a situation? It seems to me
> that you'd just make the single label more
> descriptive to cover it adequately.

A good example of needing two or more labels is when the labels are
separated by mark-up, such as in different table cells for formatting or
positioning with CSS.  For example in a two dimensional layout, the label
"shoe" may be the column heading and label for a set of radio buttons in a
cell that is also labeled by a row heading that says "size".  Other row
headings / labels would be "color" or "style" or other things to do with
"shoes".  Each radio button has a label and value as well, but the group of
buttons, even though grouped by FIELDSET, needs labels and/or legends that
are in more than one place.

HTML is broke in my opinion regarding labels (for and by), fieldset,
legend.  LEGEND is currently only specified as a ELEMENT contained within a
FIELDSET element and can't span table markup.

For some reasons it was done right for table headings when the data cell
used the concept of "labeled by" when the headers= attribute was specified.
There is no corresponding "labeled by" for each form control.  Each label
and legend needs the ID, then each control can list the IDs it is labeled
by.  [by the way, labeled by is in the Java API].

I'm going to start a new thread with the PF group.
In the mean time, the cluege of using title attributes and table headers is
the only way to work around the problem.

[1] FIELDSET and LEGEND
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/interact/forms.html#edef-FIELDSET

Regards,
Phill Jenkins
IBM Research Division - Accessibility Center

Received on Wednesday, 24 April 2002 17:43:00 UTC