Accessible Forms

[David Dorward]

I'm running a few tests to see how I can implement forms to conform with
WCAG checkpoint 10.4 and be as accessible as possible while causing the
least amount of irritation for visitors who don't benefit from
place-holding text.

I'd appreciate it if people could drop by http://david.us-lot.org/www/ph/
and run through the test suite (which shouldn't take long). I'm especially
interested in results from users of assistive technologies (screen readers,
braille output devices, screen magnifiers, etc), so if you know anyone who
uses them please pass the word along.

<url:http://david.us-lot.org/www/ph/>

--
David Dorward http://david.us-lot.org/
Which is stupider: Pop-up ads claiming they'll stop spam, or spam claiming
it'll stop pop-up ads? -- Dork Tower

[Jukka K. Korpela]

David Dorward <do*****@yahoo.com> wrote:

I'm running a few tests to see how I can implement forms to conform
with WCAG checkpoint 10.4 and be as accessible as possible while
causing the least amount of irritation for visitors who don't
benefit from place-holding text.

That checkpoint should be regarded as null, void, and harmful to
accessibility. This is more or less the consensus among accessibility
specialists that have discussed it on different fora, though people
usually formulate this more politely than I do now.

Note that the wording is:
"Until user agents handle empty controls correctly, include default,
place-holding characters in edit boxes and text areas."
The time has come when user agents handle empty controls correctly. If
there are still exceptions to this, the harm caused by dummy initial
content on all browsers surely overweighs them.

For one, <input ... value="Your name"> is not just stupid, it also
confuses people since it conflicts with the real use of initial values,
for setting _meaningul_ defaults that could well be accepted by the
user (like a user name picked up from a data base). Before anyone says
that nobody can be so stupid as to assume that he can just accept "Your
name" in the name field, let me remind everyone that accessibility is
not just for the blind. It's also a matter of being accessible to
people who have cognitive disabilities, for example.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

[Jukka K. Korpela]

David Dorward <do*****@yahoo.com> wrote:

It was suggested to me that "Your name here" would be of benefit to
those with cognitive disabilities, or simple inexperience with web
based forms, by aiding in the recognition of them.

That might be an initial impression (but note that it was _not_
presented as an argument for checkpoint 10.4, which is in the Interim
section, i.e. in guidelines that try/tried to address user agent
problems on a temporary basis). But on second thought, it would just
confuse. It's not a Web-wide practice, far from that, so people would
need to un-learn the principle when moving to other pages. Besides, it
violates the very idea of value="..." attributes in <input>, as I
described, and it causes the trouble of deleting the text before
entering actual data (though this might be automatic in some browsers).

That idea really takes the wrong approach. The meaning of a field needs
to be explained _before_ the field, in normal text, preferable marked
up using <label> - which is more or less part of the WAI guidelines.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

[John Bokma]

David Dorward wrote:

[snip]

It was suggested to me that "Your name here" would be of benefit to those
with cognitive disabilities, or simple inexperience with web based forms,
by aiding in the recognition of them.

I am using a chat quite regulary which has an applet with "*** Type your
message here, then press the Enter key ***" in the input line as
default. Guess how often the first line of a new guest in the chat is:

<nick> *** Type your message here, then press the Enter key ***

I think that:

Your name: [ ]

Is clear enough, and that:

Your name: [ Please enter your name here ]

is weird and cumbersum.

John

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