[thelist] drop down date choosers and labels for accessibility

[Austin Harris]

A bit of a conundrum here;

I have a fieldset with various form elements in one of which being a set of three dropdowns for the date. The issue is how to provide the suitable labels for day, month and year AND for all three. I don't really want to have to write "birthday - day" "birthday - month" & "birthday - year". (This will get worse when using for a date that is for something like "insurance start date" etc.)

In theory I should put all of them in a fieldset and make the legend the title for the date but I am not sure that this is right, (ie having nested fieldsets - feels a bit 90's tables to me!).

If you make it seperate fieldsets then the date isn't really part of the fieldset, (which could easily be soemthing like personal details.)

What I currently have is this;

<fieldset class="first">

<legend>Title of first fieldset</legend>

...some other bits of form in here...

<p>Date chooser</p>
<select id="dateDD" class="dropdownList2">
	<option value="1">01</option>
	<option value="2">02</option>
</select>
<select id="dateMM" class="dropdownList2">
	<option value="1">01</option>
	<option value="2">02</option>
</select>
<select id="dateYYYY" class="dropdownList4">
	<option value="1">2001</option>
	<option value="2">2002</option>
</select><br/>
<label for="dateDD" class="labelDate">Day</label>
<label for="dateMM" class="labelDate">Month</label>
<label for="dateYYYY" class="labelDate">Year</label>

</fieldset>

Any ideas or pointers?

It's something that has been on my mind for some time, (I seem to be constantly doing forms with dates in!)

Austin