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Re: Forms in Tables

for

From: Bourne, Sarah (ITD)
Date: Jan 18, 2012 9:00AM

It has long been a pet peeve of mine that AT does not have better support for data tables that have interactive elements (i.e., form fields.) The semantics are already there, but we have to add redundant code for them to be properly announced. It is this failing that makes online calendars and time sheets, for two obvious examples, so difficult for screen reader accessibility.

Aria-labelledby (as illustrated in Benjamin's post) is often the tidiest, and easiest to implement for dynamic applications.

If you need to support AT versions without ARIA, another option is to use TITLE attributes on the form fields. This is a WCAG2 technique (H65: Using the title attribute to identify form controls when the label element cannot be used, http://www.w3.org/TR/2012/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20120103/H65.) In this case, you would often be repeating the text that aria-labelledby would be determining for you.

<textarea
name="attendee-284894-notes"
title="Attendee notes for John Doe">

sb

Sarah E. Bourne
Director of Assistive Technology &
Mass.Gov Chief Technology Strategist
Information Technology Division
Commonwealth of Massachusetts
1 Ashburton Pl. rm 1601 Boston MA 02108
617-626-4502
<EMAIL REMOVED>
http://www.mass.gov/itd