The reason some screen readers will have trouble picking up the form
labels, is that they haven't been coded properly. When you build a
web form,
the trick is to associate the label with the relevant form field. A
screen
reader looks for this association, and announces the relevant text
when the
form field is landed on.
At the moment, the code for a typical form field on this page looks
something like this:
First Name
<input type="text" name="FieldData0" value="" maxlength="100"
size="30">
To create the association between the label and the form field, two
things need to happen. The first is that the label tag must be used,
like
this:
<label>First Name
<input type="text" name="FieldData0" value="" maxlength="100"
size="30">
</label>
The second is that two attributes have to be applied. One to the
label tag, and one to the input tag. Both attributes must share the
same
value, and it's this that creates the association between the two
elements,
like this:
<label for="first_name">First Name
<input id="first_name" type="text" name="FieldData0" value=""
maxlength="100" size="30">
</label>
It looks as though the website may have been created using a tool
such as Dreamweaver. There's quite a lot of unnescessary code in
there,
particularly the use of tables to control the layout of each page.
To keep things sensible, I've simplified the code examples above. A
web developer shouldn't have any trouble working from there though.
A useful
guide to coding accessible web forms can also be found here:
http://www.accessify.com/features/tutorials/accessible-forms/
Léonie
-----Original Message-----
From: jaws-uk-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:jaws-uk-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
] On
Behalf Of David W Wood
Sent: 17 January 2010 17:18
To: jaws-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [jaws-uk] help explaining accessibility
All:
I am trying to tell the author of this site:
http://www.cwops.org/newmembersignup.php
the labelling is not very good, but I am not experienced enough to
explain
it to him.
In particular, the links.
Also JFW isn't picking up the labelling of the edit fields
automatically.
Is this also a coding issue.
Comments welcomed.
My contact there is biddable to suggestions.
TIA
David
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