Using aria-labelledby instead of <label> element

Hi all,

We are developing a tool to manage different fields related to many 
records in a dataset. The information is presented as a data table to 
show and edit the values of each record, so the column headers act as 
labels for each field, and row headers identify each record. For 
example, imagine that you have a chess shop:

Columns: Piece, color, material, unit price
Rows: King, Queen, Rook, Knight, Bishop, Pawn

Thus, we need to construct the "label" for each field combining both row 
and column headers "Queen color", "Knight unit price", etc. We have 
tested aria-labelledby to do this, and it seems to work fine with all 
the screen readers and platforms that we have tested (JAWS & NVDA w/ IE 
& FF, VoiceOver w/ Safari). We have also seen that this technique has 
been submitted to the WCAG WG [1]. However, I cannot find it in the 
Techniques document, so I don't know if there is a reason to avoiding it.

What do you think? Would it be acceptable to use aria-labelledby as the 
only way to label a form control?

Thanks in advance,
Ramón.

[1] Associating multiple labels with a form control using ARIA-LABELLEDBY
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-wcag2-techs/2010Aug/0000.html

Received on Thursday, 22 March 2012 11:20:56 UTC