WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: can redundant placeholder text be considered "incidental"?

for

From: glen walker
Date: May 12, 2022 12:40PM

One other piece of information, the placeholder text is not visible by
default. The label for the field displays "inside" the field so it looks
like a placeholder but when the field receives focus, the label font
shrinks a bit and moves up out of the way above the field so it's still
visible while the user types in the field. As soon as the label moves out
of the way, the "optional" placeholder text appears, again as redundant
information and of course disappears when you start typing.

On Thu, May 12, 2022 at 11:55 AM glen walker < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> We have a form with asterisks on the labels for required fields (and an
> instruction line saying what the asterisk means).
>
> So fields without an asterisk can be considered optional.
>
> We also have placeholder text on the optional fields that says
> "optional". It's redundant information because the label doesn't have an
> asterisk. It kind of reinforces that the field is optional but isn't
> necessary to know it's there.
>
> Placeholder text typically fails color contrast. Would you consider
> redundant placeholder text as "incidental" with regards to the exception in
> 1.4.3?
>
> The placeholder text is not "part of an inactive user interface component"
> so that part of the incidental text definition doesn't apply.
>
> I also have a hard time applying "pure decoration" to the placeholder
> although it's close. The normative definition (
> https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/#dfn-pure-decoration) of "pure decoration"
> is "serving only an aesthetic purpose, providing no information, and having
> no functionality". In this case, the placeholder isn't really for
> aesthetic purposes and it does provide information, albeit redundant
> information. Maybe you could interpret it as aesthetic as a bit of a
> stretch.
>
> The last part of the 1.4.3 incidental exception says "part of a picture
> that contains significant other visual content". While the placeholder
> text is not part of a picture, there is other significant visual content
> (the field label, with or without the asterisk).
>
> My preference is to have the placeholder have sufficient contrast. That's
> just a better UX. But as you know, there are some companies looking at the
> "checklist" approach to accessibility and want to (initially) fix only
> things that strictly fail WCAG. I'm sure I could argue that it does fail,
> but playing the devil's advocate, can you see a reason why it wouldn't
> fail? My only thought is how to consider it "incidental" text.
>
>