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Re: column headings, labels, form elements

for

From: philip steven lanier
Date: Aug 1, 2002 2:01PM


"...since the purpose of the check box is readily apparent to sighted
users."

I looked at the screen capture you sent us, and it wasn't readily apparent
to me (I am sighted) that the checkbox was for deleting the item.
However, I am not a regular user of this site/page, so that does make a
difference. Regardless, however, it seems to me that this is more of a
usability issue. Users reading the page with a screen reader should have
no trouble identifying the contents of the "checkbox column", since all
the cells in that column are checkoxes and there is only one column with
checkboxes. Of course there should be a way to identify what row the cell
is in, but this does not concern the column heading.

In any case, the checkboxes are not likely to be any more ambiguous for
non-sighted users than for sighted users. From the accessibility
standpoint it's probably fine. And since this is a forum on
accessibility, not usability, I won't go there.

Philip Lanier
Senior, Informatics
University of Washington



On Thu, 1 Aug 2002, Lori K. Brown wrote:

> Dear WebAIM:
>
> I work on a web-based collaboration software product called SiteScape
> Forum. We are attempting to make the HTML that our product renders
> standards compliant and accessible in the coming version.
>
> In a number of instances we list entries in a table, and the first few
> columns of data include a checkbox that users can click to select the
> item for deletion. Currently, the column that contains that checkbox
> does not have any heading text above it, and there's really no logical
> (at least to us) space available in the table to render a label for each
> instance of the checkbox. Repetitive labeling ('this is the deletion
> checkbox') seems pretty pointless, and a waste of screen real estate.
>
> My questions:
>
> 1) Does every column of a data table HAVE to have some kind of text
> heading? I understand that column headings should be associated with the
> data they label, but do I in fact need to supply headings in the first
> place? (I think it's common sense, but we cannot come to agreement on
> this in my dept.)
>
> 2) Can I solve this problem by using a title attribute on the checkbox
> to label it for text reader users, since the purpose of the check box is
> readily apparent to sighted users?
>
> To make it easier to tell what the heck I'm talking about, I have
> uploaded a screen capture of the table I am talking about at:
> http://www.sitescape.com/other/tableslabels.gif
>
> The columns that do have headings above them are associated with their
> appropriate data with the tag scope="blah", as appropriate.
>
> Thanks in advance for any assistance.
>
> Lori K. Brown
> User Interface Engineer
> SiteScape, Inc.
>
>
>
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