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Re: Accessible Form Validation Errors

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From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Sep 2, 2004 1:39PM

> First of all, if you use the bold tag and the tag to
> produce bold and red, using a screen reader, there will be no
> indication of this change in appearance.

Right. I'm using STRONG for the bolding. The color is done via CSS, but
that's just an added visual for those that can see it. What's more important
is that the error is there.

Oh...actually, I probably didn't explain that right. I'm not just using
color/strong to indicate the errored-out field. I'm actually placing an
error message in the label of the field that had the error. The error
message, itself, is styled.

> One method, although I wonder how usable it is, it to only display
> the item that has an error such as the email address if it is not
> valid. This means that the backend coding must be configured to "spit
> out" only problematic fields. However, this can appear strange and
> with only 4 fields, it might be too much effort.

Hmm...an interesting thought. I've seen it done that way before. While that
is perhaps a bit more accessible, I do think it is a bit less usable having
the form actually change.

> Another suggestion is to add a message right at the top which states,
> "Your email address is wrong, please correct it." and then the user
> knows exactly what field to correct. You can use bold (strong), and
> colours but don't refer to them.

That's what I was thinking. Again, for this short form, It's probably not a
big deal. But if the form is 20 items, having to tab through each one to
find out which ones errored out would be a pain, so, yea, I think
explicitedly stating the fields with errors at the top is the way to go.
Would adding anchor links be overkill?

-Darrel