Consider adding headings to allowed content in <legend> element
#724
Comments
stevefaulkner
changed the title
<legend> tag<legend> element
|
Also, legends are screwed up by some AT, despite legends/fieldsets existing since like forever https://twitter.com/powermapper/status/797913194404728832 and this could be a useful solution. |
|
any input @sideshowbarker? |
|
At a glance this seems reasonable. It would be nice if form navigation were better - especially for the nearly all of us who don't use screen readers - and it is in principle feasible to use ARIA with legends in this way already to achieve the same effect for screen readers. But this doesn't seem to break anything, to enable an improvement, and to match what at least some people do as they design forms. All of which should count as arguments in its favour. |
Seems like a good change to me, for the same reasons @chaals and @StommePoes and @DavidMacDonald give and because I can’t think of any authoring mistake it would prevent an HTML checker from helping authors catch. This history FWIW is that HTML4 restricted |
|
@stevefaulkner if you can explain this, get agreement and do it in a hurry, that would be grand. If someone - @DavidMacDonald ?? provides a Pull Request that would be even grander :) Otherwise please re-assign the milestone to give a bit more time for consideration… |
fixes w3c#724 thanks @DavidMacDonald
When we have one thing per page, our current pattern is to let the h1 be the question and then repeat but visually hide it in the legend (or label). That means screen readers will read the question twice, which is not a proper barrier but annoying and gets raised as an issue again and again, e.g. in #320 or on the cross-government accessibility mailinglist and from accessibility auditors. This changes that by moving the h1 into the legend. That is currently invalid but will be valid in HTML 5.2 [https://www.w3.org/TR/html52/sec-forms.html#the-legend-element] and the W3C validator passes it fine. Also see the reason for the change: w3c/html#724.
Screen reader users often navigate using headings. Many web developers wrap up groups of form fields in the
<fieldset> <legend>construct and they feel this is most accessible. There are some accessibility wins with this construct but the big loss is the that headings cannot be used according to current HTML spec which only allows "phrasing" content https://www.w3.org/TR/html5/dom.html#phrasing-content-1I've done some testing of headings inside
<legend>elements and it doesn't appear to break anything in browsers, and it is navigable by assistive technology which easily find these headings.http://davidmacd.com/test/fieldset-legend-heading.html
Therefore, it appears simply allowing heading content in the
<legend>element would be a reasonable amendment to the spec.https://www.w3.org/TR/html5/forms.html#the-legend-element
Proposed amendment
In section 4.10.17 under content model change
Content model:
Phrasing content.
to
Content model:
Phrasing content or Heading content
With a link on Heading Content to
https://www.w3.org/TR/html5/dom.html#heading-content
The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered: