Accessible Forms and Sample Code

It's the example source code bit that makes this Accessible and usable forms article stand out for me. How many times have I re-written search form html? Many many many times. Yes, I recycle some of it but all my snippets are on my laptop at home and so aren't necessarily available when I'm on site... Unless I've been particularly organised and updated my USB drive.

Anyway, back to the point. I disagree with a couple of the recommendations in the article, mainly that "text type fields should have a default value." Yes, default values are specifically mentioned by WCAG Checkpoint 10.4 but the ever opinionated (but with good reason) Jukka Korpela discussed this point on WebAIM a few weeks back and concluded that the "until user agents" part of 10.4 had been satisfied and giving form elements a default value wasn't only unnecessary but actually a hinderance. The post I'm referring to doesn't seem to have been archived by Google but Joe Clark goes into detail on why prefilling text fields is a bad idea.

The other point I disagree with is that "text descriptions should follow radio and checkbox inputs" - I would say that they must. The RNIB show a good example of an inaccessible form when they're out on the road and it demonstrates very well how confusing labels before their radio/check boxes can be...

Finally, it's also worth noting point 15 in the guidelines list - that forms are data and as such can be marked up with tables. This subject comes up again and again on CSS-D and WebAIM so it's good to see it being formally disseminated.

  • Comments off for Accessible Forms and Sample Code