Re: Web Forms: Usability and Accessibility Question.

On  3 Feb, Geoff Deering wrote:

 [Geoff, your text comes out with odd characters such as \x92 in various
  places. Can't say I know why]


> If possible I’d like someone with more speech reader knowledge and
> experience than myself to answered some of the following…

  Someone with more experience from speech browsers will need to answer
  most of your questions. However:


> What about when a field is mandatory?  The standard way of indicating this
> is with an asterisk after the label.  For accessibility this should precede

  Please don't. Firstly, the phrase "standard" in your statement
  must be interpreted as "de facto standard", as there is no written,
  official, standard way of indicating a mandatory field - sadly.

  Second, how is that "*" supposed to be read ? A screen reader cannot
  automatically interpret it and read "Mandatory field", even if it
  exist in a LABEL - nor are there any one way of reading the character.

  Splat ? Asterix ? Star ? How should the "*" be read in an English
  document ? Granted, the speech browser should read the text in
  English, but what about the splat ?

  Consider, also, the speed with which many speech systems operate. I
  have had the dubious pleasure of hearing the old Greytower site read
  by Jaws - I couldn't keep up, and I'd written the text it read.

  May I suggest writing, in the label, that this field is in fact
  mandatory ? A single character de facto method does not carry enough
  information. I'd recommend

   <label for="id">First name (mandatory information)</label>
    <input type="text" ...


-- 
 -    Tina Holmboe                    Greytower Technologies
   tina@greytower.net                http://www.greytower.net/
   [+46] 0708 557 905

Received on Tuesday, 3 February 2004 08:10:38 UTC