WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

RE: Tables for layout

for

From: Tim Harshbarger
Date: Mar 20, 2002 1:16PM


That is one of the drawbacks of using the LABEL tag. -- its not particularly
helpful in cases where either you need to associate multiple labels with a
single field or a single label with multiple fields. In the first case,
there isn't a way to do it. In the second case, the user has no good way of
knowing which field (sharing the same label) he or she is in.

I know I have used Jim's suggestion of implementing the TITLE attribute. I
had one situation where some developers were trying to create a specialized
calculator that would allow the user to set up multiple scenarios. For
instance, the whole first row was labelled "amount," but each column was
given a label like "Option A," "Option B," etc. Whether or not the user has
a disability, he or she needs to know that the first field is asking
specifically for the amount for Option A. The LABEL tag does not allow for
that. Instead, we incorporated a TITLE attribute something along the lines
of "Option A Amount."

Tim