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Re: Computing a textbox's accessible name when its label is hidden using display:none

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From: Bryan Garaventa
Date: Sep 3, 2022 1:27AM

Hi,
Yes there is a logic flaw, but it's not with the role from what I can tell.

First, we are talking about two different specs. There's the AccName spec and the HTML spec.

The core AccName spec is meant to handle core functionality, and then the HTML spec uses this to handle relative elements for their native host semantic.

It used to be that within the HTML spec, hidden labels were not permitted because this is a flawed design pattern for accessibility, especially since it causes the automatic onclick functionality to be unusable for sighted mouse users.

The AccName spec, in contrast, only explicitly referenced the hidden state of ARIA attributes such as aria-labelledby and aria-describedby, and never the HTML label+input with matching for and ID attributes, which was always meant to be handled by the HTML spec.

From what I can see in the latest HTML spec though, the hidden state of a label is not mentioned at all, making it's functionality entirely unpredictable from a user agent implementor perspective. It is neither permitted nor forbidden,.

Personally I believe there is a bug here with regard to the HTML spec. The intended functionality does need to be documented so that user agents can expose it within the accessibility tree. At present, if you check the accessibility tree in Chrome, you will not see a name for hidden labels.

For now the label element does not map to any ARIA equivalent in the ARIA spec.
https://w3c.github.io/html-aria/
Mainly because there is no label role in ARIA as yet, though this is scheduled to be added.

So, it is not clear how hidden elements are meant to be handled in these cases as yet, and likely won't be for some time.



Bryan Garaventa
Principal Accessibility Architect
Level Access, Inc.
<EMAIL REMOVED>
415.624.2709 (o)
www.LevelAccess.com