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Re: Alternatives to LEGEND for a radio button?

for

From: Geof Collis
Date: Sep 8, 2009 11:30AM

Hi Andrew

I wasn't aware of that, the only thing I can see
is element access, would that be it? I dont like
to turn anything off since I need to hear
everything that is going on because I do accessibility audits and hand code.

cheers

Geof


At 12:50 PM 9/8/2009, you wrote:
>Geoff,
>Are you aware that you can turn off the voicing
>of the legend for controls contained in the fieldset?
>
>I think that Evan said it best earlier - that
>the legend with the fieldset is currently the
>best way to establish a semantic association
>between the radios or checkboxes and the group
>label, and how it is voiced is up to the screen reader application.
>
>Even if all web developers decided that they
>would all skip fieldset and legend and would all
>use an HTML heading before a set of radio
>buttons, you still would need to deal with how
>any given assistive technology supports that
>convention. If you don't like the way JAWS
>reads HTML, you should absolutely raise the issue with Freedom Scientific.
>
>Thanks,
>AWK
>
>Andrew Kirkpatrick
>
>Senior Product Manager, Accessibility
>
>Adobe Systems
>
> <EMAIL REMOVED>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
>[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Geof Collis
>Sent: Tuesday, September 08, 2009 12:43 PM
>To: WebAIM Discussion List
>Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Alternatives to LEGEND for a radio button?
>
>Hi Darrel
>
>In the case of radio buttons JAWS tells me how
>many to choose from, checkboxes aren't but it is
>just as easy to tab over them, out of JAWS mode
>and hit the space bar to select which ones I
>want. I personally just need text in front of the
>list of items telling me to make my choice as follows:
>
>1)What are your favourite foods,please check all that apply:
>chees
>eggs
>onions
>
>2)What are your favourite colours, please check all that apply:
>
>blue
>red
>green
>
>and so on.
>
>It seems to me that forms are changing to the
>point of being noisy, or too much information
>that I dont need to hear, I'm of the mindset of
>keeping it simple. Perhaps I'm alone on this but
>I understand breaking up information into
>paragraphs headings and lists but forms are
>different because of the intricacy of them, it'd
>be like anouncing a new paragraph or line everytime I read an article.
>
>Having said that, if I had to choose the lesser
>of 2 evils I'd use headings instead of legend.
>I'm not aware that JAWS announces a heading the same way it does legend.
>
>cheers
>
>Geof
>
>
>
>
>
>
> >Geof, you mentioned the following:
> >
> > > I just want the  form to be a form, not something cooked up to make
> > > it look good for the sighted or pass some suspect guideline and I
> > > want the least amount of chatter from JAWS. I dont want my form
> > > broken up by headings either. Then again maybe I'm asking to much.
> >
> >In your opinion, how would you prefer that a group of checkboxes be
> >identified? For instance, if this were a list of checkboxes with
> >labels:
> >
> >cheese
> >eggs
> >onions
> >
> >How would you prefer they be grouped? It seems to me that there needs
> >to be some sort of way to identify those three form fields and their
> >labels as "Choose your omelet ingredients" but I'm not entirely sure
> >what I should be using mark-up wise to accomplish that. Legend seemed
> >like the standard answer per web standards but due to both visual
> >rendering and verbose audio rendering, it seems like the worst option.
> >An H2 sounds like it might be OK as it should only be read once. The
> >key is to make sure it *is* read at least once in most screen readers
> >(rather that skipped over when in forms mode).
> >
> >-Darrel
> >