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Re: form select dropdown - label, title or aria?

for

From: Moore,Michael (Accessibility) (HHSC)
Date: Sep 8, 2015 2:32PM

Aaron,

Which screen readers do not support the title in form fields when there is not another means of determining the accessible label for the item? I thought that this was universally supported and provided more backwards compatibility than aria-label.

Mike Moore
Accessibility Coordinator
Texas Health and Human Services Commission
Civil Rights Office
(512) 438-3431 (Office)

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Aaron Cannon
Sent: Tuesday, September 08, 2015 3:17 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] form select dropdown - label, title or aria?

Forget the title, at least for screen reader users. Many screen readers will ignore it in certain circumstances. If you use aria-labelledby, you will need to give it an ID of an HTML element that contains the label of the field. At that point, you might as well just use a label.

If you're absolutely certain you don't want to move the label off screen, then you're only real option is to use an aria-label attribute.

Aaron

On 9/8/15, <EMAIL REMOVED> < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> I have a form that I'm working on to make it more accessible and it
> has a select box on it like this:
>
> <select class="form-control" name="quality_reporting_facility"
> id="quality_reporting_facility" aria-labelledby="Please Choose a
> Facility"> Example of the form is here:
> http://regionalhospital-hut.ehctest.com/about/quality-safety/
>
> We don't want a separate visible label that repeats the same as what's
> there for the default option value - Please Choose a Facility or
> Please Choose a Category
>
> Digging around, I find that I can use the title attribute, aria-label,
> or aria-labelledby.
>
> Which is better, or does it really matter? The WAVE tool complains
> there is no <label>, but doesn't recognize either the aria-label nor
> the aria-labelledby when I add one or the other, although the both are
> noted as acceptable in the additional information.
>
> I know I could also add the label and pull it off-screen with css, but
> I'd rather avoid that if possible.
>
> Thanks!
>
>
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