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select onchange and WCAG 2.0

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From: Jon Mires
Date: Mar 21, 2013 2:03PM

Hi everyone,

We're helping a client bring their site up to WCAG 2.0 AA conformance.

They have an account selector dropdown (<select> element) that causes a
page reload (form submit) to display account details for the relevant
account. This fires onchange - there is no submit button.

I've read the thorough discussion on this list from last year (
http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread?threadG37) as well as some other
resources.

There seem to be clear usability drawbacks to this method, not the least of
which is that several browsers require key combinations that users are
unlikely to be aware of in order to get the onchange event to fire (or not
fire) when the user wants it to. It seems unreasonable to expect users to
know these key combinations, and providing descriptions before each
instance of the interface also seems less than ideal. With some user
testing, we are also seeing that the onchange event fires inconsistently
based on the combination of browser / OS / screen reader version people are
using.

So the main question:

Although we think there are reasons not to use select onchange, are there
specific reasons using the select onchange interface to submit a form would
not meet WCAG 2.0 AA?

One of the failure examples (Example 2:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2012/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20120103/F36) for 3.2.2 is this
exact situation, but it is described as:

"This is a example that submits a form when the user selects an option from
the menu when there is no warning of this behavior in advance."

Does this mean if there is warning of the behavior in advance it would meet
WCAG 2.0?

Thanks in advance for your insights,
Jon