WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Label or Placeholder?

for

From: Jonathan Avila
Date: Jul 29, 2016 9:01PM

> On this form there is no label tag. Is it accessible (WCAG can accept it), or should developers add the label tags too?

Aron, the label element is not the only way to provide an accessible name for a form field, however, use of placeholder alone would not meet WCAG 2 A/AA success criteria. Placeholder while used as fallback to calculate an accessible name is not meant to provide a name for a form field -- it's meant to be a hint, a placeholder -- the HTML5 spec discourages this as well. In addition, the placeholder is likely not as widely support by assistive technology. Keep in mind that form fields will also need visible labels -- and once data is entered into the field the placeholder will go away and will no longer provide a visual label for the form field.

Jonathan

Jonathan Avila
Chief Accessibility Officer
SSB BART Group 
<EMAIL REMOVED>
703.637.8957 (Office)

Visit us online: Website | Twitter | Facebook | Linkedin | Blog
Check out our Digital Accessibility Webinars!


-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Ócsvári Áron
Sent: Friday, July 29, 2016 8:08 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: [WebAIM] Label or Placeholder?

Hello,

on a web-form, every field has a placeholder, wich contains name of the field (e.g. first name, e-mail address, etc). On this form there is no label tag. Is it accessible (WCAG can accept it), or should developers add the label tags too?


Thanks for your help!

Regards,

Aron