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Re: Accessible form field hint text

for

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Jun 24, 2013 12:07PM

It would not work for older browsers (IE does not support
aria-describedby prior to IE8 I believe, Jaws does not support it
prior to Jaws 9 or 10, Firefox prior to v3.6 does not support any
ARIA).
For the very old browsers you may just need to consider injecting all
messages into the labels on the form field, you can use invisible text
for the benefit of screen readers as discussed above,, the move focus
to the offending input field with JavaScript.
If user agent does not support or run JavaScript .. well, you may have
to mail them an accessible stone tablet *grin*.
No, at least, if you have all the error messages in the form field
labels, but you cannot manipulate the user focus, I think that is a
reasonable accommodation.
Cheers
-B
p.s. second Jennifer's recommendation - excellent series, I need to go
back and read it again in fact.

On 6/24/13, <EMAIL REMOVED> < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Thanks everyone, some really useful stuff.
> We have to support some old browsers like ie6, can I still use the aria
> describedby property? Would it just ignore it or cause errors?
>
> Thanks
>
>
>
> > On 24 Jun 2013 18:10, Jennifer Sutton < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> There's a great five-part series of posts by Roger Hudson, with
> demos, that covers many aspects of form implementation.
>
> While I know that others have addressed the specific questions
> raised, I thought I'd post the link to the first part of the series
> in case those on the list haven't seen it and/or in case other
> specific questions arise.
>
> Start at:
>
>
> Accessible Forms 1 Labels and identification Web Usability
> http://usability.com.au/2013/04/accessible-forms-1-labels-and-identification/
>
> There are links to all of the parts from that first page.
>
> Jennifer
>
> > >