WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Accessible Form Validation Errors

for

From: liza.zamboglou
Date: Sep 9, 2004 7:54AM

*******************************************************************************************************************************************************
This email and any files transmitted with it are intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed.
*******************************************************************************************************************************************************

I also would be very interested in reading this article !!
Thanks
Liza

-----Original Message-----
From: lainie.strange [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: 09 September 2004 14:37
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Accessible Form Validation Errors

*******************************************************************
This email has been received from an external party and
has been swept for the presence of computer viruses.
*******************************************************************



I think there would be a lot of interest on this list. I would
definitely vote for an article to be put together. Thanks, David, for
offering.

Lainie
-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]

Sent: Thursday, September 09, 2004 8:01 AM
To: Strange, Lainie
Subject: WebAIM Discussion List Digest 09.09.2004.

WebAIM Discussion List Digest 09.09.2004.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: Re: Accessible Form Validation Errors
Date: Wed, 8 Sep 2004 13:49:33 -0600

My colleagues and I have developed a guideline document for handling
accessible and usable form validation errors. Lisa Battle and I even
discussed it as part of our UPA 2004 presentation: &quot;Design Patterns and
Guidelines for Usable and Accessible Web Applications&quot; -- by Lisa Battle
and David Hoffman. The guidelines use a diverse variety of techniques
for ensuring that different types of users will be aware of the
existence and number of errors, be able to easily navigate to the
errors, and have easy access to all associated directions and cues. The
outline of the document is as follows:

Description
Guidelines for Use
Preventing Errors
Ensuring that Users are Aware of the Existence and Number of
Errors
Ensuring that Users Can Find Errors Easily
Providing Explicit Information and Helpful Wording for Error
Messages
Presenting Errors that Involve Conflicts Across Pages
Interaction Requirements
Standard Approach
Alternative Approach
Other Accessibility Requirements
Keyboard Navigation
Coding Tips
Related or Associated Controls

The following are a sampling of some of the interaction requirements:

Title Bar Message: An error message is added to the page title
(displayed in the Windows title bar) prior to any other title bar text.
The message wording makes the user aware of the existence and number of
errors (for example, &quot;1 error on page&quot;, &quot;2 errors on page&quot;). If there
are no errors on the page, no message is included in the title bar.
Including this information in the page title ensures that blind users
will hear the message when the page is loaded and on-demand, whenever
they choose to confirm their location.

Error Summary Message: An error message is added to the screen
immediately below the page heading. The message uses a specially defined
error message style. The error message style is attention-getting, and
uses red because red is associated with errors. An optional graphic may
be displayed to the left of the message, but the message itself is text
to ensure that low vision users can read it. The message wording makes
the user aware of the existence and number of errors, using a complete
sentence (for example, &quot;There is 1 error on this page.&quot;, &quot;There are 2
errors on this page.&quot;). If there are no errors on the page, no error
summary is displayed. There is a tab stop on this message so that a user
can tab to it.

List of Errors: A bulleted list of errors appears immediately below the
error summary message. There is one list item for each error.

Error Links: Each item in the list of errors is a hyperlink. Selecting
the link takes the user directly to the field where the error occurred.
----------

If there is interest, we would consider preparing an article to offer to
WebAIM on the topic.

Take Care,
David

----
To subscribe or unsubscribe, visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/


PLEASE NOTE: THE ABOVE MESSAGE WAS RECEIVED FROM THE INTERNET.

On entering the GSi, this email was scanned for viruses by the
Government Secure Intranet (GSi) virus scanning service supplied
exclusively by Energis in partnership with MessageLabs.

Please see
http://www.gsi.gov.uk/main/notices/information/gsi-003-2002.pdf for
further details.

In case of problems, please call your organisational IT helpdesk

The original of this email was scanned for viruses by the Government Secure Intranet (GSi) virus scanning service supplied exclusively by Energis in partnership with MessageLabs.

On leaving the GSi this email was certified virus-free