WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Google Forms: Label issues

for

From: Sailesh Panchang
Date: Apr 19, 2012 2:18PM

> 1. You are correct, the question and the help text are both being
> associated as labels for a single input element. This is technically
> incorrect, but some screen readers seem to handle this OK, but there
> is no guarantee that all screen readers will.
>
Sailesh: As a matter of fact it is technically correct to associate 2
labels with one input control. Both 'for' values should have to match
the 'id'value. It is right to say that some AT handle it right ... it
is user agent dependent.
I'd perhaps use one label to include the help text if it is adjacent
to question text. Else aria-describedby may have wider user agent
support than 2 labels.
> 2. All of the questions are coded as labels, but sometimes those
> labels aren't explicitly tied to the following choices, such as
> multiple choice questions made with check boxes or radio buttons. What
> is really needed is a different model of presenting the questions and
> choices. Some question types, like multiple choice, in most cases
> should probably be implemented with a legend for the fieldset. This
> raises the problem then of some questions being coded as labels and
> some as fieldsets. There are other solutions to this problem, such as
> using headings to denote each question, or else using aria-label or
> aria-labelledby attributes.
Sailesh: Fieldset/legend is the appropriate solution. Well if the
structure of the question and answer choices are different, they
justify different markup. It does not have to be the same as for
question text with input type=text.
Unless custom controls that do not support HTML labelling methods are
used, there's no need for aria-label or labelledby. Use of heading too
is not the appropriate choice.
Sailesh Panchang
Deque Systems