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Re: Adding a label to search box

for

From: Derek Featherstone
Date: Apr 12, 2006 9:10AM

On 4/12/06, Joshue O Connor wrote:

>Jim said:
>
>>> Use title="search text" on the input element.
>>>
>>> It is a no-brainer - no need to hide text and the title is
>>> supported by screen readers.
>
>But can that be relied on? Isn't it true, that many screen readers
>(well JAWS anyway), may not read out the contents of the title
>attribute at all (depending on the users verbosity settings).

In genera, verbosity settings of screen readers do not impact the title
attribute on form fields. In general, yes, title attributes cannot be
relied upon for their use in normal text mode. Their behaviour is
different though for forms.

When a label is not present, the title attribute *will* be read out by
default (at least in major screen readers[1]).

I'm still a fan of using an actual label, but the use of title sounds to
be quite reliable, and I'd like to see some follow up testing and some
interpretation of the spec so that we know what exactly should be
happening with User Agents.

[1] see Gez Lemon's "Invisible Form Prompts" and the ensuing comments
for discussion:
<http://juicystudio.com/article/invisible-form-prompts.php>;

Cheers,
Derek.
--
Derek Featherstone <EMAIL REMOVED>
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