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From: Jordan Wilson
Date: Wed, Jul 09 2014 12:08PM
Subject: .NET wrapping entire page in a form element
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Greetings all,

I'm looking for more information regarding the common practice of wrapping the entire contents of a page in a <form> element on .NET projects, particularly to use ViewState. That seems like a detrimental practice both for standards based coding and for accessibility.

Are there standard workarounds to avoid using the <form> wrapper solution?
Is there information about how it adversely affects assistive technology users?

The best information I could find online was a random thread on a CMS forum:
http://devnet.kentico.com/forums/f67/t43834/necessary-usage-of-form-on-master-page

Any accessibility specific thoughts or experience with that would be useful. I'm not working on the backend team, but I want to make sure the backend team doesn't inject a form element wrapper and break our accessibility efforts.

Jordan Wilson
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =

From: Greg Gamble
Date: Wed, Jul 09 2014 12:21PM
Subject: Re: .NET wrapping entire page in a form element
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.Net requires a single form element for the dynamic content of a page, and any .Net controls must be in that form tag.
There is no work around, unless you're using MVC.

Curious as to what issues you think a form tag would break, accessibility wise?

Greg

From: Greg Wocher
Date: Wed, Jul 09 2014 2:00PM
Subject: Re: .NET wrapping entire page in a form element
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Hello,
I used asp.net and C# at my college and I never noticed any
accessibility challenges with this at all. Both JAWS and NVDA worked
with the applications I developed quite well. I am curious as to what
problems you think might happen from this especially since I am a novice
in this area. As a matter of fact I just finished my degree about two
weeks ago. My degree is a Bachelors of science in Computer Information
Systems specializing in Web Development and Administration.

Thanks,
Greg Wocher

Follow me on Twitter @GWocher

On 7/9/2014 2:08 PM, Jordan Wilson wrote:
> Greetings all,
>
> I'm looking for more information regarding the common practice of wrapping the entire contents of a page in a <form> element on .NET projects, particularly to use ViewState. That seems like a detrimental practice both for standards based coding and for accessibility.
>
> Are there standard workarounds to avoid using the <form> wrapper solution?
> Is there information about how it adversely affects assistive technology users?
>
> The best information I could find online was a random thread on a CMS forum:
> http://devnet.kentico.com/forums/f67/t43834/necessary-usage-of-form-on-master-page
>
> Any accessibility specific thoughts or experience with that would be useful. I'm not working on the backend team, but I want to make sure the backend team doesn't inject a form element wrapper and break our accessibility efforts.
>
> Jordan Wilson
> = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
> > > >

From: Jordan Wilson
Date: Thu, Jul 10 2014 12:00PM
Subject: Re: .NET wrapping entire page in a form element
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Sorry, I was only subscribed to the digest and didn't get the responses...

My understanding was that the form control would incorrectly put the
screen reader into forms mode at the first form element the user entered.
This site is still in its infancy so I haven't tested it yet but it came
up in technical discussions so I flagged it.

Also, a form inside a form is invalid markup per the WC3, so I was worried
that it would cause parsing errors and programmatic issuesŠ basically
violating WCAG 2.0 4.1.1 (Parsing)

http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/#prohibitions


I am surprised not to find much information about it, considering its in
widespread use. Perhaps most assistive technologies have already dealt
with the repercussions so that it doesn't have any negative effects?

_

Jordan Wilson
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =




On 7/9/14 4:00 PM, "Greg Wocher" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:

>Hello,
>I used asp.net and C# at my college and I never noticed any
>accessibility challenges with this at all. Both JAWS and NVDA worked
>with the applications I developed quite well. I am curious as to what
>problems you think might happen from this especially since I am a novice
>in this area. As a matter of fact I just finished my degree about two
>weeks ago. My degree is a Bachelors of science in Computer Information
>Systems specializing in Web Development and Administration.
>
>Thanks,
>Greg Wocher
>
>Follow me on Twitter @GWocher
>
>On 7/9/2014 2:08 PM, Jordan Wilson wrote:
>> Greetings all,
>>
>> I'm looking for more information regarding the common practice of
>>wrapping the entire contents of a page in a <form> element on .NET
>>projects, particularly to use ViewState. That seems like a detrimental
>>practice both for standards based coding and for accessibility.
>>
>> Are there standard workarounds to avoid using the <form> wrapper
>>solution?
>> Is there information about how it adversely affects assistive
>>technology users?
>>
>> The best information I could find online was a random thread on a CMS
>>forum:
>>
>>http://devnet.kentico.com/forums/f67/t43834/necessary-usage-of-form-on-ma
>>ster-page
>>
>> Any accessibility specific thoughts or experience with that would be
>>useful. I'm not working on the backend team, but I want to make sure the
>>backend team doesn't inject a form element wrapper and break our
>>accessibility efforts.
>>
>> Jordan Wilson
>> = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
>> >> >> >>
>
>

From: Greg Gamble
Date: Thu, Jul 10 2014 12:36PM
Subject: Re: .NET wrapping entire page in a form element
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A dot net page can only have one form tag per page. You'll get a page error otherwise. Using update panels you can do asynchronous post-backs, which greatly reduces the payload.

Also, this is only for Web Forms. MVC pages handle the form tag differently.

Greg