Re: XForms Requirements WD Ignores Accessibility

Please give serious consideration to accessibility of forms in your
new design. I hope this is only an oversight. Completion of forms can
be challenging for users with:
     situational limitations

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From: Susan Lesch W3C Weekly News - 9 April 2001

 > XForms Requirements Working Draft Published

 > 6 April 2001: The XForms Working Group has released XForms
 > Requirements, a Working Draft outlining requirements for the next
 > generation of Web forms. Comments are welcome on the www-forms@w3.org
 > public mailing list. See how forms are changing on the W3C XForms
 > home page.
 >     http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-xhtml-forms-req-20010404

There is no mention of accessibility therein. In the other reference:

 >     http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/

"accessibility" appears, only in the reference to Jakob Neilsen's book,
and the reference to The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines:
     http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WAI-WEBCONTENT-19990505/

 From which the checkpoints about forms state:

10.2 Until user agents support explicit associations between labels and 
form controls, for all form controls with implicitly associated labels, 
ensure that the label is properly positioned.

12.4 Associate labels explicitly with their controls.
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Further, consider the guidance from the (just gone to last call)
User Agent Accessibility Guidelines Working Draft 2001-04-04
     http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/UAAG10/

6.2 If the user can modify HTML and XML content through the user interface, 
provide the same functionality programmatically by conforming to the 
following modules of the W3C Document Object Model DOM Level 2 Core 
Specification [DOM2CORE] and exporting the interfaces they define: (1) the 
Core module for HTML; (2) the Core and XML modules for XML. [Priority 1] 
Content only. Note: For example, if the user interface allows users to 
complete HTML forms, this must also be possible through the required DOM 
APIs. Please refer to the "Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Core 
Specification" [DOM2CORE] for information about HTML and XML versions covered.
Techniques for checkpoint 6.2



Regards/Harvey Bingham
Invited Expert, W3C Web Accessibility Initiative