[thelist] accessible way to indicate that a form field is required
Max Schwanekamp
lists at neptunewebworks.com
Fri Nov 17 11:36:26 CST 2006
ben morrison wrote:
> So sighted CSS users have to guess that bold means this field is required?
Like many forms with required fields, I put a brief explanatory
statement at the top: Required fields *in Bold.* Yes, screen reader
users will hear that too, but so what? It's only 4 words, and as long
as they can actually use the form fields (with the non-visual "Required"
text) it's a forgivable sin, certainly less annoying than many other
accessibility sins they're likely to encounter on an average web page.
My choice not to use the asterisk is mostly based on personal experience
with users who don't catch that the asterisk signifies "required" (as
opposed to "there's a footnote about this somewhere at the bottom of the
page"), whereas in my experience bold seems to be more intuitive for
those non-web-savvy folk, and is sufficiently common that the web-savvy
will catch on as well, cf the first paragraph in that article cited
earlier on simplyaccessible.org[0]. But of course my anecdotal evidence
is hardly conclusive!
[0] http://simplyaccessible.org/examples/required-form-fields
--
Max Schwanekamp
NeptuneWebworks.com
541-517-9064
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