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Re: labeling search box

for

From: Dey Alexander
Date: Jul 11, 2003 12:02AM

Further to this, advice from the folks at Vision Australia was to try
using a single pixel image, with a suitable text alternative. In my
case, I've used "Enter search terms" as the submit button is labelled
"Search". This seems to work fine in HPR and JAWS, although The Wave
reports that I have an empty label element.

Cheers,
Dey

I previously wrote:

> 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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