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From: Bill Mason
Date: Sun, Nov 10 2002 2:42PM
Subject: Re: default values in type="text"
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At 01:15 PM 11/10/2002, Lori K. Brown wrote:
> From my team's own research, we found that many
>users disliked default values, and that some were confused by them.
>The solution used by many sites of using javascript to add this
>default value but to wipe the value away when the user's cursor is
>placed in the text input is itself just another accessibility
>headache, since one of the OTHER requirements of the W3C is that
>everything work with javascript turned OFF!

I disagree that this poses a W3C accessibility issue.

The requirement is: "Ensure that pages are usable when scripts, applets, or
other programmatic objects are turned off or not supported."

If you have JavaScript turned off in this example, the page is not
unusable. You simply have to manually clear a field that would otherwise
have cleared itself.

I think this specific requirement about default input form values is dated,
though. As the guidelines says, "Until user agents handle empty controls
correctly...." I think we're at that point.

Bill Mason
Accessible Internet
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
http://www.accessibleinter.net/



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