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Re: ARIA and Label tags both for Error Messages

for

From: Rogers, Jeremiah Z.
Date: Feb 18, 2014 9:09AM

Might the solution be to precede labels with some symbol or word, like an exclamation mark or "Error", then use instruction at the beginning of the form to alert screen reader users that the form has errors and, to find out what those errors are, they need do whatever is necessary to access the ARIA-describedBy information? Word it much differently than this, of course, but seems like a possibility.

-----Original Message-----
From: Alastair Campbell [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: Monday, February 17, 2014 12:33
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] ARIA and Label tags both for Error Messages

Ah, ok.

However, that doesn't make it very useful for error messages as you tab through a form.

Perhaps a combination of dual labels and describedby would be most robust (assuming you can't include the error message in the label).

Thanks,

Alastair
On 17 Feb 2014 16:43, "Paul J. Adam" < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> VoiceOver OS X does support aria-describedby it's just treated as a
> help tag or "hint" and only read after a user adjustable delay, about
> 7 seconds I think for OS X. I tried your demo page and it worked.
>
> This was a new "feature" Apple released without any documentation or
> release notes as usual.
>
> So by default it will appear that an aria-describedby or title
> attribute is not working with VO/OS X but you have to either wait 7
> seconds, or adjust the delay under the VoiceOver utility, or press
> VO+SHIFT+H. However, there is not an audio earcon or other indication
> when you're focused on an element if it actually has a title or
> aria-describedby attribute so the user either has to wait to hear it,
> press VO+SHIFT+H to see if one is there, or just ignore them as Apple seems to be suggesting they do?
>
> Help tag, Hints screenshots can be seen here:
> http://pauljadam.com/moderna11y/#title
>
> Paul J. Adam
> Accessibility Evangelist
> www.deque.com
>
> On Feb 17, 2014, at 6:23 AM, Alastair Campbell < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
> > Sorry to jump in the middle a old thread, but I did some testing on
> > this recently.
> >
> > Susan Grossman wrote:
> > "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."
> >
> > I was working with a team that struggled with implementing my suggestion:
> > putting error messages in the label. Unfortunately they couldn't
> > match
> the
> > visual design, at least in a responsive layout.
> >
> > They tried multiple labels (which I thought odd, but couldn't find
> anything
> > that forbade it), but that didn't work very well in NVDA.
> >
> > Then we tried aria-describedby, but found that VoiceOver on OSX
> > doesn't support describedby, test-case:
> > www.alastairc.ac/testing/aria-describedby.html
> >
> > As a temporary fix I think they used aria-labelled by, which
> > consistently appends the error message to the primary label.
> > However, describedby
> would
> > seem the better fit in general.
> >
> > Jukka wrote:
> >> "The aria-describedby attribute is supposed to provide information
> >> about
> > a field, not about an error condition."
> >
> > So what should associate an error message? The issue is that a
> > screen reader user tabbing through the form fields cannot tell which
> > have an
> error
> > unless the message is associated with the input. E.g. in the label,
> > or using an ARIA association.
> >
> > -Alastair
> > > > > > list messages to <EMAIL REMOVED>
>
> > > list messages to <EMAIL REMOVED>
>


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