- From: <nick@webthing.com>
- Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 23:45:21 +0100 (BST)
- To: "Kuster, Joseph D " <jdk906s@smsu.edu>
- cc: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
On Thu, 25 Jul 2002, Kuster, Joseph D wrote: > According to the Section 508 Web Accessibility standards, each form > field requires a label. My reading of that is that it should be accessibly labelled, but not that that necessarily requires use of the "label" element. > However, I've noticed from a usability > perspective adding a title attribute for the form elements such as a > text box will allow that title to be read by a screen reader. My > question is this, on pages where text displayed by the form field would > not be ideal for the site design; would a title attribute suffice for > accessibility? Not necessarily. For example, lynx doesn't render titles, so a system based on it (with or without a screenreader on top) won't help. OTOH, the traditional table-style layout LABEL1 element1 LABEL2 element2 is just fine. ICBW, but I routinely use table markup, with something like <th scope="row">LABEL1</th> to associate such a label with its control. > I've also tried using an invisible image with an alt tag that could be > used as a label and include <label> tags for that image just like it was > text. It too, seems to work fine for a label. Is this a suitable > solution when a developer would like to avoid displaying a text label? Sounds OK. But if you want to avoid displaying a text label, do you necessarily want to do something *different* for assistive devices? > A > good example would be when you have an input box being used as a search > box, and the submit button clearly states "Search Site." OK, either of your proposals sounds perfectly good to me for that. > If anyone knows a contact that could help me out as far as the > accessibility of these options, the information would be greatly > appreciated. Well, that's just my opinion, and won't carry any weight if you have a PHB breathing down your neck. Take it or leave it. -- Nick Kew
Received on Thursday, 25 July 2002 18:45:25 UTC