RE: Obscure images as labels

All these pinches of salt add up to a lot of salt when you're doing an audit!

I appreciate that this is only a technique, but it's all we've got to go on because the Understanding page is so unhelpful. The use of images as labels is such an obvious use case, yet it's not addressed at all. Is there any reason why it can't be added?

I do fail the use of magnifying glass icon buttons if they are the only means by which a textbox is labelled visually. However, the success criteria are so ambiguous that I'm only perhaps 60:40 sure it's the correct interpretation and it wouldn't take much to convince me otherwise.

Our team discussed this at great length and concluded that some icons would be fine for most people, but some people won't recognise some icons. So you either accept all icons, fail all icons or make a subjective judgement, none of these being a good choice.

The magnifying glass icon will probably be recognised by most people, but there is anecdotal evidence that some people (typically elderly people new to browser usage) have no idea what a burger button is for. I encounter plenty of websites where I have no idea what buttons will do. It's a bit like using a text label containing words that people won't recognise, which arguably fails SC 2.4.6.

Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: Patrick H. Lauke <redux@splintered.co.uk> 
Sent: Friday, June 14, 2024 3:53 PM
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: Re: Obscure images as labels



On 14/06/2024 14:49, Steve Green wrote:

> However, the second case is addressed in technique G167, which says 
> “When a button invokes a function on an input field, _has a clear text 
> label_, and is rendered adjacent to the input field, the button also 
> acts as a label for the input field.”

It's only a technique, so take it with a pinch of salt.

I personally don't read too much into "text label" there, as otherwise the myriad of cases where we have something like just a magnifying glass icon button next to a search field would all be failing WCAG...

> The intention is clearly that the text on the button provides a visual 
> label for the input field, and that an image is not considered to be 
> sufficient.

I think that is over-interpreting what is there, to be honest.

P
--
Patrick H. Lauke

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Received on Friday, 14 June 2024 15:50:00 UTC