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<label> element

for

From: Leo Smith
Date: Mar 28, 2002 1:52PM

Hi folks,

Is it necessary to have the <label for=""> markup for form controls located
within the <form></form> tags. ( I have a label in a cell adjacent to a cell
with the form control in it).

I have not read anywhere that it is, and theoretically the <label> tag could
mark up a label located anywhere on the page, although visually you would
probably want it to be close to the control. It seems that the Bobby 508
checker likes to see the <label> markup inside the <form></form> tags.

However, when I ran one of my pages through its 508 checker
(http://www.cast.org/bobby/), it also said that it failed 508 compliance
because I had not placed default, place-holding characters in edit boxes
and text areas. I don't ever remember this being a 508 requirement (it is a
W3C III guideline, and if I remember correctly from discussion on this list,
one that is no longer necessarily a good idea.)

I guess if Bobby is giving me this kind of feedback on my pages, I cannot
take its evaluations too seriously. Unfortunately, such checkers can be
used by folks for evaluation purposes when they are either not able or do
not want to make the effort to manually check a page (*always* my
preferred method).

Leo.



{HYPERLINK "http://bobby.cast.org:80/bobby/html/en/gls/g109.html"}




Leo Smith
Web Designer/Developer
USM Office of Publications and Marketing
University of Southern Maine
207-780-4774


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