RE: Remove "placeholder" attribute from HTML and turn it into a CSS feature

Ian Yang wrote:
">From accessibility's view point, "placeholder"s' values are often
unimportant. And they are never meant to be replacements of <label>
elements. Inputs fields should always be well described by corresponding
<label> elements. Even if designers decide to hide <label> elements,
developers should still ensure <label> elements are properly presented to
AT's users. Therefore AT's users are basically fine without "placeholder"
text being hard coded in HTML."

Unimportant to whom? The label and placeholder do not have the same purpose.
The label identifies the field, the placeholder provides a hint about the
sort of data that should be entered. Neither thing is presentational, and
both will be helpful to lots of people including AT users.


Léonie.
-----Original Message-----
From: Ian Yang [mailto:ian@invigoreight.com] 
Sent: 30 April 2013 12:07
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org list
Subject: Remove "placeholder" attribute from HTML and turn it into a CSS
feature

I'm not sure if anyone has the same feeling, but imho I find "placeholder"
is more of a design/styling feature rather than a meaningful part of the
HTML content. Whether "placeholder"s exist or not and the length of their
values often depend on how a website is designed.

>From accessibility's view point, "placeholder"s' values are often
unimportant. And they are never meant to be replacements of <label>
elements. Inputs fields should always be well described by corresponding
<label> elements. Even if designers decide to hide <label> elements,
developers should still ensure <label> elements are properly presented to
AT's users. Therefore AT's users are basically fine without "placeholder"
text being hard coded in HTML.

So the proposal here is removing "placeholder" attribute from HTML spec,
while turning it into a CSS feature. Like the following example:

input:placeholder {
    content: "Your name here";
    }

textarea:placeholder {
    content: "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...";
    }


Kind Regards,
Ian Yang

Received on Tuesday, 30 April 2013 20:05:38 UTC