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Re: Visual question about inline error handling

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From: Steve Green
Date: Jan 26, 2013 2:22PM

My preference is for validation to be done when fields lose focus rather than validating after each keystroke, because I find the appearance and disappearance of error messages distracting. In the case of email addresses with domains such as gsi.gov.uk the error message can appear and disappear several times. This is bad enough visually, but it results in an even worse experience for screen reader users because in every implementation I have seen the error message interrupts the announcement of the characters that are being typed. This can easily cause typing errors that would not have occurred otherwise.

Regardless of whether you validate after each keystroke or after fields lose focus, I would expect error messages to remain after fields lose focus. I would not expect error messages to be present before fields receive focus - I know at least one site that does this and it confuses and annoys me.

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Bryan Garaventa
Sent: 26 January 2013 20:49
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: [WebAIM] Visual question about inline error handling

Hi, I'm currently working on an inline error handling module, with some extra stuff for handling dynamically updated help tooltips, but I'm not sure about something from a sighted perspective.

If you have a form with various fields, and you tab through it, would you expect inline error tooltips to appear next to every field that has invalid input?

Or, would you only expect the error tooltips to appear one at a time so that only one is visible?

Thanks,
Bryan