WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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RE: Long form legends

for

From: Joelle Tegwen
Date: May 31, 2005 9:19AM

Does that get read correctly by the screen readers? If they don't read
paragraphs (or so I heard) then do they read the headings as you tab through
the form? Are the headings associated with the correct questions so people
with screen readers know where they are?

Joelle

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Mike Foskett
Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2005 9:02 AM
To: Christian Heilmann; WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: RE: [WebAIM] Long form legends

Hi Christian,
How about dropping legend and use a heading instead?

Mike 2k:)2

-----Original Message-----
From: Christian Heilmann [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: 31 May 2005 15:33
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Long form legends

> Note the <br> tags in the legends. We need these for some browsers
> because they don't wrap the legend automatically and some of those
> don't accept styling on the legend tag. (very frustrating) But on the
> Mac browsers (that do wrap automatically), if your browser width is
> too small, you get odd wrapping because you get the <br>s and the
wrapping.
>
> We used to have the long questions inside a <p> inside the fieldset,
> but heard that was bad for people using screen readers because they
> don't read <p>s in "forms mode"
>
> What do we do?

What you could do is only apply the BRs via scripting for certain browsers.
That is the road to destruction though.

How about rethinking and rewriting the form?

A legend with a yes / no radio button is the same as a checkbox with a
label:

<input .... ><label ...>I need some support from someone while I am
on-site.</label>

--
Chris Heilmann
Blog: http://www.wait-till-i.com
Writing: http://icant.co.uk/
Binaries: http://www.onlinetools.org/
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