- From: Simon Pieters <simonp@opera.com>
- Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 10:46:41 +0200
- To: "James Craig" <jcraig@apple.com>, "Schnabel, Stefan" <stefan.schnabel@sap.com>
- Cc: "Victor Tsaran" <vtsaran@yahoo-inc.com>, "Ryan Doherty" <rdoherty@mozilla.com>, wai-xtech@w3.org
On Wed, 20 May 2009 09:40:30 +0200, James Craig <jcraig@apple.com> wrote:
> On May 19, 2009, at 11:44 PM, Schnabel, Stefan wrote:
>
>> I want to ask an heretic question:
>>
>> Who says that a text node referenced by "aria-labelledby" MUST/SHALL/HAS
>> TO be visible?
>
>
> No one, but there isn't much point in using aria-labelledby if you're
> gonna hide the label.
I can think of a couple:
* If the element is a heading element, the heading would still be part of
the document outline and thus help people who navigate the document by
headings instead of by landmarks.
* For users who don't use software that exposes the ARIA information and
also doesn't apply CSS (e.g. Lynx), the label would be just as useful
as for those to whom the ARIA information is exposed.
* Search engines who don't look at ARIA markup would still get the label.
> In that case, it'd be easier to use aria-label or
> @title.
>
> From the spec:
> If the label text is visible on screen, authors SHOULD use aria-
> labelledby and SHOULD NOT use aria-label. Use aria-label only if the
> interface is such that it is not possible to have a visible label on the
> screen.
I disagree that the visibility should be considered. I would encourage to always use aria-labelledby and, if the label should be hidden form visual users, it should be hidden with CSS.
> http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/aria/#aria-label
> http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/aria/#aria-labelledby
--
Simon Pieters
Opera Software
Received on Wednesday, 20 May 2009 08:47:43 UTC