Comments on: Accessibility of pre-filled input fields http://www.cssglance.com/news/accessibility-of-pre-filled-input-fields/ CssGlance is the first italian website focused on providing a gallery of well designed and innovative CSS based websites from all around the world. Thu, 10 Nov 2011 19:49:21 +0100 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 hourly 1 By: Andrea - CSSGlance Staff http://www.cssglance.com/news/accessibility-of-pre-filled-input-fields/comment-page-1/#comment-557 Andrea - CSSGlance Staff Wed, 08 Apr 2009 08:33:01 +0000 http://www.cssglance.com/?p=2882#comment-557 Hi Larry, thanks for your interesting reply. Adding a default text onload using JavaScript might be a possible solution indeed, especially in those cases where you cannot actually use a label because you don't have enough space. I'm thinking of inline fields, put in a single line one after the other, like month and day. On the other hand, as far as I know, some screen readers might have problems handling this kind of pre-filled text, even if JavaScript is turned on. This because they might not clean up the field properly when onfocus. I'm really keen to hear the opinion of someone who has made or can run some tests with different screen readers.. they might have the answer! Andrea Hi Larry, thanks for your interesting reply.

Adding a default text onload using JavaScript might be a possible solution indeed, especially in those cases where you cannot actually use a label because you don’t have enough space. I’m thinking of inline fields, put in a single line one after the other, like month and day.

On the other hand, as far as I know, some screen readers might have problems handling this kind of pre-filled text, even if JavaScript is turned on. This because they might not clean up the field properly when onfocus.

I’m really keen to hear the opinion of someone who has made or can run some tests with different screen readers.. they might have the answer!

Andrea

]]> By: Larry Roth http://www.cssglance.com/news/accessibility-of-pre-filled-input-fields/comment-page-1/#comment-556 Larry Roth Wed, 08 Apr 2009 05:50:20 +0000 http://www.cssglance.com/?p=2882#comment-556 Great analysis. I agree with your point. At first, I was thinking of arguing back that pre-filled fields can aid usability, but your comment about making more descriptive labels helps solve that. One thought...If you use Javascript to empty the text field, you can use javascript to populate it in the first place. This would be more onerous on the developer, but you wouldn't have to worry about screen readers or people with JavaScript turned off. Right? Great analysis. I agree with your point. At first, I was thinking of arguing back that pre-filled fields can aid usability, but your comment about making more descriptive labels helps solve that.

One thought…If you use Javascript to empty the text field, you can use javascript to populate it in the first place. This would be more onerous on the developer, but you wouldn’t have to worry about screen readers or people with JavaScript turned off. Right?

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