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ARIA and Label tags both for Error Messages

for

From: Susan Grossman
Date: Feb 11, 2014 2:48PM

We have been associating error messages to form fields using
aria-describedby, and the screen reader users who tested it thought it
worked well for them.

We have gotten some push back from a federal agency saying that no ARIA is
supported well enough to rely on and that we must you both aria and label
tags to associate the error messages.

My questions:

1) Do others agree that even aria-describedby (no Live Regions, etc.)
isn't supported enough to stand on it's own

2) Would the redundancy caused by both label tags and aria become too much
to hear for those who can utilize ARIA?

3) If yes to 1 and 2, does that leave us with just implementing the
association with label tags, or is there something else we should be
considering?

Understand that we can still keep things like aria-required (or similar)
because they're a progressive enhancement - asterisk or (optional) is
still there in the form element label.

Any help is appreciated - couldn't quite find this discussion in archives


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*Susan R. Grossman*
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