WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: Accessible conditional form fields

for

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Nov 3, 2010 11:33AM

<EMAIL REMOVED> wrote:

> Using tabindex=0 is well supported

Using tabindex for a <p> element, for example, is invalid markup when using
document types defined in current HTML recommendations. And since its
assumed meaning is just to confirm the default, I really do not see the
point.

> A promising new technique is the aria-describedby attribute.

A fundamental feature of new techniques is that they are new, i.e. not
supported by old browsers - actually, they typically start with _no_ support
worth mentioning. But that's not the only problem.

> <input type="password" id="password"
> aria-describedby="passwordDescriber" />
> <p id="passwordDescriber">Your password needs to be at least 8
> characters long, including at least one number or special
> character.</p>

This techniques seems to let the author postpone an essential description so
that it is presented _after_ the input field. This makes it a bad idea.

Even if we assume that all special accessibility-oriented software supported
the feature, and all of their users knew how to use it - and both
assumptions surely fail, the latter more permanently - such an arrangement
would mean that for the vast majority of users, essential information comes
too late. People who can glimpse over a page don't do that when filling out
a form. They expect it to be filled out in order.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/