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Nested Fieldsets

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From: Terence de Giere
Date: Feb 13, 2003 7:14AM

The discussion "Explicit Link Between Radio Buttons and "Question"
Label?" brought up the question of nested fieldsets. There is nothing in
the HTML 4.01 specification that prohibits nested fieldsets. I created a
file with a form having nested fieldsets and it validated using the
W3C's SGML parser, and also loaded it into an SGML editor with no
problem. Fieldsets add structure to a form. As with tables, nesting
fieldsets probably should not be taken to far, but a couple of levels
should do not harm, and makes it possible to give an identifying legend
to the form content as a whole, and provide subgroups of specific form
controls, each with an identifying legend.

From the HTML 4.01 specification:
"The FIELDSET element allows authors to group thematically related
controls and labels. Grouping controls makes it easier for users to
understand their purpose while simultaneously facilitating tabbing
navigation for visual user agents and speech navigation for
speech-oriented user agents. The proper use of this element makes
documents more accessible."

The discussion of visual format versus accessibility brings up one of
the points that forms the basis of the problem: the attempt to create
visual designs that display similarly or exactly across different
browsers has been one of the major causes of the accessibility problem.
To solve the problem, one must find a different design that is
compatible with accessibility. This might involve the display in
different visual browsers not being the same. Especially with older
visual browsers, like Netscape 4.x, the design question becomes one of
how much 'graceful' degredation of the design is tolerable when specific
features of CSS and HTML are not supported.

Paul Bohman's discussion of design illustrates the crux of accessible
design methodology, and in fact, any Web design, backend or frontend
that places the structure, transformability and comprehension of
information foremost: "When I markup forms for my own Web designs, I
recognize the inherent limitations of the HTML language that I'm working
with. I am also aware of the standards, and I always try to think from
the standards outward. In other words, I think through process of
developing the form with the standards, rather than try to make my form
fit into the standards after having designed it."

In other words, one designs a page first to maintain a specific
informational document structure across different platforms, visual, and
non-visual, and then somehow, one adds the gloss of presentation,
(visual, aural, text) afterwards. This is not necessarily trival,
because this structural view of information tends to be the opposite of
the way most people natually think when designing a web page, and is a
habit that may be difficult to learn. A designer of accessible Web pages
needs to think like a structural engineer, rather than like an interior
decorator and landscaper.

Terence de Giere
<EMAIL REMOVED>





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