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Re: Does WCAG require that when you click a label it checksthe checkbox or radio button?

for

From: Jonathan Avila
Date: Nov 18, 2015 8:34PM

> It seems most people are saying that it's only a "Best Practice" that when you click a label for a checkbox or radio button that the box gets checked.

Yes, that is how I read WCAG 2. There are techniques such as H65 that are deemed sufficient to meet SC 1.3.1 (http://www.w3.org/TR/2015/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20150226/H65) While the text of H65 implies it's only for situations where there can't be text associated visually, however, the check in the technique does not mandate this.

Keep in mind the following:
* aria-labelledby can be used to associate labels and form fields but browsers do not support the user clicking/touching the label to focus/check the field. So you have a case where the technical criteria is met but the functional benefits are not attained.
* SC 3.3.2 Labels and Instructions does require that visual labels be present. So a visual label is always needed -- although labels don't have to be text -- they could be icons or other controls and they don't have to be associated programmatically. On a related note the programmatic name and label should match to support users of speech recognition.

Jonathan
--
Jonathan Avila
Chief Accessibility Officer
SSB BART Group
<EMAIL REMOVED>

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