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Re: WCAG2: Form fields and labels

for

From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Feb 5, 2015 6:41AM

On 05/02/2015 13:19, Lynn Holdsworth wrote:

> What exactly does WCAG mean by "programmatically"? I always assumed
> that it meant that a browser's accessibility layer could pick up, for
> example, this field/label association, so that AT wouldn't need to use
> heuristics to guess from positioning or other factors. But I discussed
> this with a more knowledgeable friend yesterday, who felt that
> positioning in this scenario would have been a sufficient technique.

I would disagree with your friend here. Programmatically to me means "is
exposed correctly in the accessibility API by the browser", which
generally means "no AT-specific heuristics". In fact, if you rely purely
on AT heuristics, you're going to have a bad time...as heuristics can
and will differ between different ATs (and even different
versions/combinations of browser/OS of the same AT).

P
--
Patrick H. Lauke

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