Re: Nielsen's Latest Alertbox & a personal protest

I guess I don't see the harm that using a label does.  508 specifically
states that there must be a label.  I'd also like to open this to issues
beyond screen readers for instance, if title is a tool tip, how much
controll is there over rendered size of the text in it?

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Liam McGee" <liam@communis.co.uk>
To: "David Poehlman" <poehlman1@comcast.net>; <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2003 7:43 PM
Subject: RE: Nielsen's Latest Alertbox & a personal protest



Fair point regarding title-support, David.

Hmmm... I will run a few tests and get back to you all. If anyone fancies
trying it with anything that isn't JAWS, HPR, PWWebSpeak or Lynx, please do
so!

Not sure why the title appearing as a tool-tip is a problem. It's helpful
there too.

Sounds as if it will be a display:none <label> plus a title, to keep older
and newer user-agents happy. Will attempt to report back later in the week.

I think that I humbly disagree that the implication is that there will
necessarily be a label. It's not what I infer, anyway. If it had been
'Associate labels explicitly with all controls', I would have agreed with
you. If you can achieve context and orientation information without a label,
then all is well.

Regards

Liam
Communis

> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Poehlman [mailto:poehlman1@comcast.net]
> Sent: 12 November 2003 00:26
> To: Liam McGee; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Nielsen's Latest Alertbox & a personal protest
>
>
> And to muddy the watters even further substantiating bobby and
> laying a bit
> of claim to understanding the guidelines and the checkpoints, the
> implication is that there will be a lable and not all browser/user agents
> support title in this manner so you gain nothing by leaving out the lable
> and some will use title as a tooltip which will complicate things even
> further.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Liam McGee" <liam@communis.co.uk>
> To: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2003 6:55 PM
> Subject: RE: Nielsen's Latest Alertbox & a personal protest
>
>
>
> As a point of information (which may muddy the waters even further), Homer
> Page Reader and, I think, JAWS are happy to associate labels with fields
> even if they occur later in the markup.
>
> For example
>
> <input type="text" style="width: 10em" title="text
> box"><label>Name</label>
>
> would be read as Name - text box.
>
> And now for my Welsh 2p worth.
>
> **WCAG1.0 12.4. Associate labels explicitly with their controls.**
>
> If and only if a label is actually present, it should be explicitly
> associated with the field using the <label> element. If no label
> is present,
> as in Neilsen's proposed search form, you don't need a <label>
> element. BUT
> to comply with guideline 12 'provide context and orientation information',
> you still need to make it accessible.
>
> The field should be titled with title="Search field", and the
> submit button
> should read <input type="submit" name="Search" title="Submit">.
>
> In the end, don't get too close to the checkpoint, look at the guideline.
> That's what you need to achieve. If Bobby doesn't like it, that's
> a problem
> with Bobby. Email Watchfire :-)
>
> Usability and accessibility can conflict, but not very often.
> This isn't one
> of those times.
>
> Regards all
>
> Liam McGee
> Communis
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: David Woolley [mailto:david@djwhome.demon.co.uk]
> > Sent: 11 November 2003 21:53
> > To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
> > Subject: Re: Nielsen's Latest Alertbox & a personal protest
> >
> >
> > >   Mr. Nielsen finds this sufficient for the user - lacking the
> > >   information a clear and unambigious label would provide - to guess.
> >
> > I suspect the point he is making is that a search control is such a
> > standard feature of web sites that providing verbose descriptions
> > gets in the way of using it, as people can't then see the controls
> > for the descriptions.
> >
>
>
>

Received on Tuesday, 11 November 2003 22:21:00 UTC