WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Chronicle of Higher Education article "Colleges Lock Out Blind Students Online" Chronicle Article and form control labeling

for

From: Julie Romanowski
Date: Dec 14, 2010 11:48AM

Not outraged, but disappointed. Creating accessible form controls is not rock science, and we should expect better from our universities.

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Gunderson, Jon R
Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 2010 12:19 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Chronicle of Higher Education article "Colleges Lock Out Blind Students Online" Chronicle Article and form control labeling

I find it interesting that people on this list were not outraged that less than 30 percent of the 19,722 pages tested with form controls had accessible labels.

http://webaccessibility.cita.illinois.edu/data/

I can't think of a more basic accessibility feature than using a label element or title attribute to label a form control.

The lack of form control labeling was my biggest conclusion from the pages tested and my biggest worry is how to address this issue.

I think everyone agrees that form control labeling is a part of WCAG 1.0, WCAG 2.0, Section 508 requirements and almost any other web accessibility standard developed.

If higher education can't even label simple form controls correctly, how are they ever going to make Dynamic HTML widgets accessible?

Jon