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Re: ARIA and Label tags both for Error Messages

for

From: Susan Grossman
Date: Feb 11, 2014 3:47PM

On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 2:05 PM, Jukka K. Korpela < <EMAIL REMOVED> >wrote:

> 2014-02-11 23:48, Susan Grossman wrote:
>


Really appreciate the response. My remarks are inline prefaced with an
asterisk.


>
> 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.
>>
>
> What kind of error messages are we talking about, and how do they work? Is
> it a message from a client-side check, or from a server-side check?
>



*We have put the describedby attribute in the form element, with it's value
being the ID of the direct container holding the form error message. This
is not an error that validates as user moves on or a simple pattern that
can be caught in the UI.




> The aria-describedby attribute is supposed to provide information about a
> field, not about an error condition.




*Describedby appends to the label and the messages are carefully written to
describe the condition of the form element error in conjunction with the
label. Isn't the error state information about the field?



>
>
> 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.
>>
>
> The label element is supposed to associate a label with a control. It
> would seem to be entirely inappropriate to use it to associate an error
> message with anything.
>



*This is not an uncommon practice for sites dealing with the government to
use labels like this - to associate a form error message. I'm questioning
whether this practice has validity still, and that if it does, doesn't
including aria (for the modern users they state) a poor idea.




*We don't use the title attribute because less users had it set to read out
in our survey about 18 months ago. Has this changed?



>
> Yucca
>
>
> > > >



--
*Susan R. Grossman*
<EMAIL REMOVED>