[thelist] accessible way to indicate that a form field is required

Julian Rickards julian.rickards at gmail.com
Thu Nov 16 12:38:25 CST 2006


Fellow Canadian, Derek Featherstone, talked about this in Australia (his
podcast and examples are online but give me until tonight to find the link).
One of the components was to use a graphic of a red asterisk with
alt="Required" beside the label.

Although < strong> and < em> are read with appropriate emphasis in screen
readers, it may not be sufficient to alert the user.

On 16/11/06, Sarah Adams <mr.sanders at geekjock.ca> wrote:
>
> I've read that using a different label colour or making a label bold to
> indicate that a form field is required leads to poor accessibility,
> because the different colour might not be obvious to someone who is
> colour blind and wouldn't be at all apparent to someone using a
> screenreader, and that making the label bold would also not be apparent
> using a screenreader.
>
> The suggestion then is usually to add an asterisk inside the label to
> indicate that the field is required. But I think that would also be a
> bad choice for a screenreader. What do other people think? Is the
> asterisk a good idea, or would adding <strong> or <em> tags inside the
> label work just as well? I would think this would force the screenreader
> to emphasize the label, without having to actually read out the word
> "asterisk". Thoughts?
>
> --
> sarah adams
> web developer & programmer
> portfolio: http://sarah.designshift.com
> blog: http://hardedge.ca
> --
>
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-- 
Website: http://jrickards.ca
Blog: http://pen-and-ink.ca



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