- From: Jim Thatcher <jim@jimthatcher.com>
- Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 14:09:53 -0500
- To: "'Léonie Watson'" <lw@nomensa.com>, "'Charles McCathieNevile'" <charles@sidar.org>, "'Patrick H. Lauke'" <redux@splintered.co.uk>, <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Léonie Watson wrote: > The label around the submit button is > apparently redundant anyway, not least because it provides no label text, > but also because a screen reader will read the value of the value > attribute by default, which in this case has been given as "Search". Boy do I feel stupid. I didn't look at the code with enough care. The situation at http://www.hhs.state.tx.us/business/index.shtml is a typical search text entry field followed by a "search Button." There is no text to use as a label. This is a situation for which I advocate using the title attribute on the text input, title="search". But this site has a label element around the search button with for="textfield" - I thought Ah-ha someone is using the button (its value, actually) as a label for the input field. GREAT idea. I tried it and reported here that neither of the screen readers worked they way they should, nor HPR. But where I was stupid is that I didn't look carefully enough. I didn't notice that the id of the text input field is NOT "textfield"; the id is "searchstring". So small wonder the screen readers say nothing. Well I saved the page and corrected the ID on the text entry field to be "textfield" and tried the screen readers. Jaws and Window-Eyes behave the same way - they don't pick up the value of the search button as I had hoped they would. HPR recognized that the label for the text field was the search button and said "search submit button text". Yuk. Disappointing even when coded correctly. So I am back to recomending: use the title attribute! Jim Accessibility Consulting: http://jimthatcher.com/ 512-306-0931
Received on Wednesday, 6 April 2005 19:12:00 UTC