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Re: Relating answer options to their question

for

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Sep 15, 2018 4:14PM

Well put Jon
Quick question, would providing a checkbox without a label in a
fieldset with a legend be a WCAG 4.1.2 violation?

<fieldset>
<legend>I agree to the terms</legend>
<input type="checkbox">
</fieldset>

My interpretation is that, yes it does.
Because while "I agree to the terms" is the accessible name of the
group element for the checkbox it is not the accessible name of the
checkbox itself (per the accessible name and description calculation
algorithm).
Screen readers have verbosity setttings that may include not
announcing legends for fieldsets (they shouldn't but they do), but, as
far as I know, no screen reader ignores the accessible name of a form
input element like a checkbox (certain caveats about aria labeling
support in IE11 and such aside).

Thanks
-Birkir


On 9/15/18, Jonathan Avila < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>> 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
> Chief Accessibility Officer
> Level Access
> <EMAIL REMOVED>
> 703.637.8957 office
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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
>> >>
> > > http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> > > > > >


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