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Re: Regarding a dialog box

for

From: Guy Hickling
Date: Feb 19, 2017 7:28AM


Surendra,
You are correct, the absence of any label at all should be treated as a
defect. Though not serious since the user can use the arrows to hear the
content, it does leave screen and Braille reader users a little mystified
initially! Inexperienced users might not even realise what is going on.

The standard for dialogs is provided by the WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices
1.1 document at https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-practices-1.1/#dialog_modal.
It says (as did Bryan just now in this thread), a modal dialog should have
either an aria-labelledby (pointing to the heading at the top of the
dialog, if any), or an aria-label attribute instead (perhaps if a displayed
heading is absent or not informative).

It then goes on to say that additionally the author "can" add an
aria-describedby, saying "The aria-describedby property can be set...." I
take this use of the word "can" to mean it is optional.

For instance if a dialog had just a very short content, then that would
certainly be best announced immediately. (Or, the above document says, the
aria-describedby could just pick out a sentance or paragraph that
summarises the message of the dialog.) But I've seen some companies put
their entire Terms and Conditions into a popup dialog box and include it in
the aria-describedby. Only the brave or the foolhardy would want them
announced all in one go!

Regards,
Guy Hickling