RE: [WSG] implicit / explicit labels which is better?

UAAG does not require explicit or implicit labeling of form controls. Nor
does the HTML 4.01 specification [1].
UAAG requires that the user agent:
	1) provide a content focus for enabled elements (9.1 Priority 1)
	2) Allow the user to move the content focus to any enabled element (9.3
Priority 1)
	3) Highlight enabled elements according to the granularity specified in the
format. (10.2 Priority 1)

HTML 4.01 provides a mechanism for explicit or implicit association between
form control and associated labels. Each user agent has a default mechanism
for rendering and/or indicating the focus of an enabled element. Authors may
affect that rendering through the use of CSS.

[1]
http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/interact/forms.html#edef-LABE
L

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-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org]On
Behalf Of Patrick Lauke
Sent: Tuesday, August 02, 2005 4:54 AM
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Cc: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: RE: [WSG] implicit / explicit labels which is better?



(copied to w3c-wai-ig for possible clarification of UAAG)

> Derek Featherstone

> > Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, K-Meleon all cope just as well with an
> > implicit label, making it clickable. Not sure about Safari...anybody
> > care to do a super-quick check?

> From what I remember, Safari doesn't support clickable labels at all.
> Not so cool. Mental note - look at the User Agent Accessibility
> Guideilnes to see if this is *required* or optional.

UAAG are not my forte, but I think the closest it comes to this is
Guideline 7. "Observe operating environment conventions" (though it only
refers to the user agent interface, but I assume the rendered content of
a web page is also covered by this?). Now, as I'm not a Mac person I don't
know if OS X's system wide convention for checkboxes and such (in things
like OS dialog boxes, for instance) is indeed that you can
click the label to activate/focus. At least on Windows, that is the case.

> Mental note 2 -
> send something off to Dave Hyatt to find out if this can be/will be
> fixed.

+1 from me on that one. I'll email Dave later today (if people can confirm
that it can be interpreted as a possible UAAG requirement, so it adds a bit
more clout to the request).

Patrick
__________________________________________________________
Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk
__________________________________________________________
Web Standards Project (WaSP) Accessibility Task Force
http://webstandards.org/
__________________________________________________________

Received on Tuesday, 2 August 2005 22:12:24 UTC