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Re: Legend wrap (or not)

for

From: Stephanie Sullivan
Date: Aug 29, 2007 8:40PM

On Aug 29, 2007, at 1:50 AM, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

> Please use normal English punctuation instead of terminating every
> sentence in an ellipsis. That will make your messages more accessible.

Sorry I am hard for you to read. I answer hundreds of emails a day
and dealing with proper English tends to slow me down substantially.
Thus, I write in "thoughts." Can't promise I won't do it anymore, but
I'll try. :)

(And to the gentleman that suggested I might be offended, I've been
on this list for ages - maybe years. And though I don't read often
and post even less often, I know Jukka. Smart man, lacks tact.
Probably not his fault completely, but I won't let it bother me. ;))
>
>> My problem enters with the legend. In some browsers, it wraps. In
>> some it doesn't.
>
> It's a tricky issue, with various markup and styling and design
> issues.
>
> But the essential thing, especially from the accessibility point of
> view,
> is this:
>
> If wrapping or non-wrapping matters, it's too long. The legend
> should be a
> short heading-like text, not e.g. a long question. So if it's so
> long that
> it might need to wrap (in a fairly normal canvas), move the text
> after the
> legend element and write new contents for the legend element.
>
> Example:
>
> <legend>How much do you watch television, estimated as an average
> number
> of hours per day, during the last six months?</legend>
>
> would become
>
> <legend>Watching TV</legend>
> How much do you watch television? Please estimate this as an average
> number of hours per day, during the last six months.
>
> In addition to solving the wrapping problem, this has basically the
> same
> benefits as the use of short descriptive headings.

Your example would surely work if I were using fieldsets to group
simple little single pairs of label/inputs. But I'm not. I'm using
fieldsets to group like sections of the form. Quite frankly, this
client is being quite conversational and familiar in his style on
this site (it's a web 2.0 app) and it's refreshing. But we may have
to look at paring it down a bit due to other comments in the thread.
Thanks for the input,
Stef.

---
Stephanie Sullivan
http://www.w3conversions.com
Dreamweaver Task Force for WaSP
http://www.communitymx.com