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

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From: Julie Romanowski
Date: Nov 19, 2015 2:14PM

We need to remember that assistive technologies include hardware as well as software. We're not just talking about screen readers.

There are employees with mobility challenges at our company who use special types of ergonomic mice to access their computers. For example, one person uses a foot mouse (also called a slipper mouse) and another person uses a head mouse. Both of them have poor fine motor control and it's very difficult to impossible for them to click on small items such as radio buttons or check boxes. Coding the controls and their respective labels correctly using the id and for attributes provides a much larger area for these two people to click on, making selecting the controls much easier.

In the "Understanding Techniques for WCAG Success Criteria" documentation under "Sufficient Techniques" (http://www.w3.org/TR/2015/NOTE-UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20-20150226/understanding-techniques.html#ut-understanding-techniques-sufficient-head) it states that "If web content implements the sufficient techniques for a given criterion correctly and it is accessibility-supported for the content's users, it conforms to that success criterion". Maybe I'm misunderstanding the WCAG 2.0 definition of accessibility support (http://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/conformance.html#uc-accessibility-supported-definition-head), but I take this to mean that using aria-labelledby to label radio buttons will fail SC 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value, as it isn't " accessibility-supported for the content's users" (the people using ergonomic mice as AT).

Thoughts?