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RE: e-mail addresses and proper forms labelling of their constituent parts

for

From: Mary Utt
Date: Sep 15, 2003 1:33PM

Lori,

They are just going to say, "use one text field and error-check."

The problem in our case is that we have several long-standing
(as in before-my-time) admin forms that use the [ ]@[ ] format.

So I opted to go with that flow rather than retrofit existing
(non-templated) forms. Pros: consistency, self-documenting, less
error prone. Cons: 2 fields rather than 1, accessibility may be
a problem. To which I can argue, 1) admins are used to hard lives and
don't have to do this very often and 2) we never committed to making
the admin forms accessible.

So those were my reasons for doing that form that way.

Mary

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Lori K. Brown [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
> Sent: Monday, September 15, 2003 3:13 PM
> To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
> Subject: e-mail addresses and proper forms labelling of their
> constituent parts
>
>
> Dear list:
>
> I am reviewing a form for my company's product. In it, we have a form
> that asks for an e-mail address. In this instance, the e-mail address is
> not for a particular person, but is for setting up a pop client that
> posts messages received by that account into a web-based piece of
> software.
>
> Right now, the form requests the pop client address in two different
> fields, with an @ sign in between them. This is our way of doing a
> little brute force data validation, as we then concatenate the two
> fields w/ the @ sign in between to build the e-mail address.
>
> I have several usability / accessibility questions about this problem,
> and this technique.
>
> 1) This is another one of those annoying cases where one data element --
> an e-mail address -- is built from two form elements (and the @ in
> between). Is there a proper way to label this so as not to be confusing
> for screen reader users? In particular, are there specific names for the
> front part of an e-mail address and the back part that are widely and
> correctly understood?
>
> 2) Would an example, like ' <EMAIL REMOVED> ', be helpful?
>
> 3) Is there a best-practice solution to this problem? In particular, is
> it preferred to just let users type their own complete addresses without
> engaging in this kind of parsing operation?
>
> Thanks in advance for any assistance.
>
> Lori K. Brown
>
>
>
>
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