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Re: Relating answer options to their question

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From: Jonathan Avila
Date: Sep 15, 2018 3:38PM

> I ran into an interesting, related question just yesterday - is it a WCAG
1.3.1 failure for a text box to have a fieldset legend, but not a label?

I look at it this way.
SC 3.3.2 covers the requirement for visible labels (graphics or text)
SC 4.1.2 covers programmatic labels
SC 1.3.1 In this case is there to make sure the programmatic and visible label coincide -- not to the point of the new WCAG 2.1 SC 2..5.3 Label in Name -- but that a person can make that connection that the programmatic name sufficiently provides the same information as communicated visually. SC 2.5.3 takes this to a higher level then was required previously explicitly indicating the same text be included but does not address situations where no-text graphical labels are provided such as icons without text. So 1.3.1 still has value in that situation even under WCAG 2.1.

Jonathan

Jonathan Avila, CPWA
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-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Jared Smith
Sent: Friday, August 31, 2018 11:13 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Relating answer options to their question

This is an area of WCAG that is subjective. I'm sure many would flag a lack of a fieldset/legend for a group of radio buttons as being a failure under 1.3.1. The WCAG documentation does list adding a fieldset/legend as a Sufficient Technique (https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/H71.html). This, of course, does not mean that you have to have one in order to be conformant. The documentation does not list lack of fieldset/legend as a failure.

Support for fieldset/legend varies across browsers and screen readers.
Various screen readers treat them very differently - some repeat the legend for every control within the fieldset. This can be very intrusive and annoying, especially if the legend is lengthy. Chrome *STILL* doesn't support them at all. As you note, styling has historically been a bit difficult, but I think this is much less of an issue in modern browsers.
You can remove all of the legend styling to keep the semantics without any of the styling problems.

As an alternative, you could use role="radiogroup" with an ARIA label to group radio buttons and provide the grouping a label. For screen reader users, this should be treated identically to fieldset/legend. Radiogroup is, however, only for radio button groups - it shouldn't be used for groups of checkboxes or other controls (though last time I tested it seemed to work OK).

In my opinion, I think fieldset/legend (or radiogroup) is certainly optimal for groupings of controls that are ambiguous without the association of the higher level description/legend (or group label), but I think it may be a bit of a stretch to call it a 1.3.1 failure if that descriptive text is present immediately before the grouping.

I ran into an interesting, related question just yesterday - is it a WCAG
1.3.1 failure for a text box to have a fieldset legend, but not a label?

Jared


On Fri, Aug 31, 2018 at 3:24 AM, Isabel Holdsworth < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> On one of our pages there's a heading, a question and a set of
> checkboxes that allow the user to choose one or more answers from a
> list of four or five possibles.
>
> We've been advised that not wrapping the whole thing in a fieldset
> with the question as a legend could be a WCAG2 fail (I'm not sure
> under which guideline).
>
> As a screenreader user, I find that this sort of mark-up can be
> intrusive, as I have to listen to the whole question before hearing
> the label on the first checkbox. Also, long legends are notoriously
> difficult to style upp using CSS.
>
> Is there any other, less intrusive, way of associating a question with
> its possible answers, or is the fact that the question appears just
> before the options in the DOM enough to create an implicit
> association?
>
> Thanks as always for any thoughts on this.
>
> Cheers, Isabel
> > > archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> >