WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: Alternatives to LEGEND for a radio button?

for

From: Chris Pearce
Date: Aug 27, 2009 4:25PM

> "screenreaders ignore headings, paragraphs and other non-forms
> elements when in forms mode, so text in headings might not be read out
> once a screenreader user starts to fill out the form." [0]

Also I work with ASP.NET websites which require the entire HTML body to be wrapped in a form tag unless of course you use MVC which I'm fighting for!



-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of D A
Sent: Friday, 28 August 2009 12:56 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Alternatives to LEGEND for a radio button?

> "screenreaders ignore headings, paragraphs and other non-forms
> elements when in forms mode, so text in headings might not be read out
> once a screenreader user starts to fill out the form." [0]

Now why would a screen reader do that? Ugh!

I'm tempted to consider this an issue and figure out a way to deal
with the inability to style Legend tags properly. However, this seems
to maybe be more of a bug/oversight of the screen readers themselves.
If a screen reader ignores any non-form element, I assume that also
means it's not picking things up like tips (additional text, often a
paragraph) next to form elements to help the user.

Of course, that same thread mentions the following:

"To complicate matters further, there are also bugs with some versions
of Jaws and nested fieldset legends."

Anyone know if these issues (ignoring headers in a form, bug with
nested fieldsets) are primarily limited to JAWS or is it a more
universal issue with screen readers in general?

-Darrel