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Re: labeling search box

for

From: Dey Alexander
Date: Jul 10, 2003 11:38PM

This is an issue I'm currently grappling with. There are a couple of
other options that could be tried, depending on the nearby elements on
the page.

1. Include a text label "search" and <label> element and use CSS to hide
these (by setting display:none on the screen style sheet). Downside of
this is that the text label will display on older (non-CSS compliant)
browsers.

2. Include a text label "search" and <label> element and set the text
colour to be the same as the background color so that it isn't visible
on the page.

Downside to both options are:

* space for the "invisible" text label may interfere with surrounding
page elements - though the font size could be set to be extremely small

* based on an earlier post from Paul Bohman, the screen reader will read
out the label and the submit button text. In our case, the submit
button is labelled "Search", so we'd end up with the screenreader user
hearing "search" twice.

Cheers,
Dey

Terence de Giere wrote:


> If you leave off the label element, then the page will not conform to
> accessibility guidelines for either Section 508 or WCAG 1.0. If you use
> the label, the text will show. That is the idea.


--
Dey Alexander
Usability Specialist, Web Resources and Development
IT Services Division, Monash University (Clayton)
Email: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Ph: +61 3 9905 4740 Fax: +61 3 9905 3024


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