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

for

From: Iza Bartosiewicz
Date: Sep 14, 2010 9:06PM

>>> "Jukka K. Korpela" < <EMAIL REMOVED> > 12/09/10 6:28 >>> wrote:

>> adam solomon wrote: WCAG indicates that a title attribute will suffice in its stead.

>If it says so, and I cannot see where it does, it is simply bad advice. The
title attribute is by definition an optional advisory title, and in
practice, only a small fraction of users will ever notice its presence.

Here's the WCAG 2.0 technique:

H65: Using the title attribute to identify form controls when the label element cannot be used (HTML)
http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-WCAG20-TECHS-20080430/H65.html

"The objective of this technique is to use the title attribute to label form controls when the visual design cannot accommodate the label (for example, if there is no text on the screen that can be identified as a label) or where it might be confusing to display a label. User agents, including assistive technology, can speak the title attribute."

My first choice would be to see if the design could be changed to accommodate a properly marked-up label; I would only use the title attribute as a last resort, and in preference to the variety of other approaches conveniently covered by Gez Lemon here http://juicystudio.com/article/invisible-form-prompts.php.

>and in practice, only a small fraction of users will ever notice its presence.

Are you referring to using the title attribute in general or using it specifically with form elements?

From what I've read, most of the recent versions of screen readers support title attribute on form controls, and the results from the Paciello group's 2005 test show that even older versions of the two most common screen readers supported it fairly well: http://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/articles/WE05/forms.html

If anyone is still confused about this, I'd like to recommend Roger Hudson's 'Accessible Forms using WCAG 2.0' for a thorough, practical and sensible advice on forms and accessibility: http://www.usability.com.au/resources/wcag2/

cheers

Iza Bartosiewicz