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Re: Do you need to have a label on a form field when it has a default value?

for

From: William Lawrence
Date: Sep 13, 2010 5:06PM

On Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 12:28 PM, Jukka K. Korpela < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> That's just further confusion and has nothing to do with "default text".

Often, place-holding text, or default values, is added to form fields
because it is believed to be an accessibility requirement of Section
508, or other legacy accessibility guidelines. This used to be the
case when widely used assistive technology could not support empty
form controls correctly. Most of the time place-holding text is used
in place of appropriately labeling form controls explicitly when
trying to meet restrictive and limiting design requirements.

It is a best practice to never use place-holding characters in edit
boxes and text areas by default unless the text is included after
processing the user’s input, the semantics of the document naturally
would include such characters, or the characters were previously
entered by the user, e.g., in the case of refining a previous search.

In the event that the place-holder text is to be used, then it must
disappear when focus is achieved in that form control element that is
not device dependant.