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Re: Required Fields and Username / Password on a Website

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From: Tim Harshbarger
Date: Jul 25, 2012 9:01AM

Elle,

Perhaps the best way to approach this is by adopting a rule for required and optional fields.

If all fields are required, then there doesn't need to be any indicators next to the fields.
If only some fields are required or optional, then the UI needs to indicate in an accessible manner which fields are either required or optional.
If all fields are optional, then the instructions for the form need to indicate clearly that all fields are optional.

That isn't necessarily written in WCAG 2.0, but it should provide a good consistent rule that you can apply across UI's without too much concern that someone will misuse it and create something that is not consistent with WCAG 2.0.



-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Elle
Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2012 9:47 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Required Fields and Username / Password on a Website

Sailesh:

I agree that it should be an equivalent experience for sighted and
non-sighted users (hence, why hidden text alone is not sufficient).
However, what I'd like to see is where in WCAG I can justify not
indicating that Username and Password are required. If I make exceptions
outside of WCAG 2.0, that introduces the opportunity for many more
discussions on what other items we can disregard.


Thanks,
Elle