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fieldset for radio buttons

for

From: Marek Prokop
Date: May 22, 2003 4:23PM

Hello all,

I have a question on the accessibility of a search form,
particularly whether the fieldset with a legend around the radio
buttons is necessary (or at least useful).

Full story: Because I use a free outsourced search engine, I
have to provide two options -- internal search of my website
only and global search all over the Web. My initial design looks
like this (some elements and attributes are omited):

<form ...>
<div>
<label for="sstr">Search for:</label>
<input type="text" id="sstr" />
<fieldset>
<legend>Where to search</legend>
<div>
<input type="radio" id="searchinsova" checked="checked"
/>
<label for="searchinsova">This site</label>
</div>
<div>
<input type="radio" id="searchincz" />
<label for="searchincz">WWW</label>
</div>
</fieldset>
<input type="submit" value="Search" class="button" />
</div>
</form>

You can review the result (unfortunately in Czech) in the left
column below the menu of this page:

http://www.sovavsiti.cz/test.html

The problem is that the form occupies fairly large space and I'd
like to make it a little shorter. I could get rid of the
fieldset (including the legend) around the radio buttons, but I
definitely don't want to make it less accessible. What's your
opinion?

Thank you very much for your kind advice,

Marek
CSS Workshop :: http://www.sovavsiti.cz/css/



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