WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Placeholder instead of explicit label?

for

From: Jonathan Avila
Date: Jan 5, 2015 8:25AM


> Is using a PLACEHOLDER attribute instead of a <label> tag enough to satisfy WCAG2? I know that using a TITLE attribute is a sufficient technique, but not



I would have concerns on relying on this attribute to provide a programmatic label because I consider it to be fallback content rather than a labeling attribute, however, the HTML to Platform Accessibility APIs Implementation Guide<http://www.w3.org/TR/html-aapi/>; indicates it is used in the accessible name calculation. It is likely not fully supported by assistive technology. Specifically to my knowledge it is not supported by speech recognition software.



In addition, I have concerns that SC 3.3.2 may not be met when the field contains data since the placeholder would not be shown.



Best Regards,



Jonathan



--

Jonathan Avila

Chief Accessibility Officer

SSB BART Group

<EMAIL REMOVED>

Phone 703.637.8957

Follow us: Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | Blog | Newsletter



-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Lynn Holdsworth
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2015 10:08 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: [WebAIM] Placeholder instead of explicit label?



Hi all,



Is using a PLACEHOLDER attribute instead of a <label> tag enough to satisfy WCAG2? I know that using a TITLE attribute is a sufficient technique, but not sure about placeholders.



Thanks as always, Lynn