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RE: Accessible forms question

for

From: Patrick Lauke
Date: May 31, 2005 6:35AM

> Brownell, Melody

> We have a SS number field on a form that is three text areas
> rather than one long text field. Because of the back-end
> processing on our mainframe we can't make it one field - it
> has to be three separate fields.

The best solution would be to create a small intermediate bit of
server-side code that breaks up a SS number submitted in a single
field into 3 components, before passing it on to your mainframe.

> Question: How do I associate the label with three different
> text fields so that the user knows there are three parts to
> filling in their SS number?

You can't. You'll need to put a fieldset with appropriate legend
around the three inputs, and ideally have a label (or, failing that,
at least a title) for each of these inputs.

something like

<fieldset>
<legend>Social Security number</legend>
<label for="ss1">first 3 numbers</label>
<input id="ss1" type="text"... />
<label for="ss2">...</label>
<input id="ss2" ... />
<label for="ss3">...</label>
<input id="ss3" ... />
</fieldset>

Patrick
________________________________
Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk