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                     Bobby is, I think, a bit too pedantic
                                        
New day, new article [1] in 30 days to a more accessible weblog [2]. This
time about labeling of form elements. Hey, why not? It's easy enough to do. 

So then I decide to use Bobby [3], a validator that checks the accessibility
of a webpage and one of the fussiest (if not the fussiest) accessibility
validators I know of. So then it's a process of validate, figure out what
Bobby is complaining  about, fix, lather, rinse, repeat. 

I easily get AA approved [4] (if I make sure not to have duplicate links with
the same text, and hack the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) of the results
page) but the exhaulted AAA rating (which it uses by default) just wasn't
there. Let's see … I explicitely set the forground and background colors for
the Google [5] image (previously, I had just set the background color), set
the properties for the <FIELDSET> and <LEGEND> tags so they don't disrupt the
visual look of the page (yet are still there for those that need it) and
added them to both forms on the page, even though the Google one only has one
visible field to set (come on! a <FIELDSET> for one entry field? What are you
guys [6] smoking?) I even added the <LABEL> tags the way Bobby wants them
(explicit labels [7] instead of implicit labels). 

No go. 

Now what? 

Seems that to get the exhaulted AAA rating [8], I need to add placeholding
characters [9] in the text entry fields over there to the left (or way below,
depending on how this page is rendered). 

Yea, right 

Accessibility vs. usability? I'm not entirely sure what the accessibility
issues are for filling in bogus or example data for the two fields and it's
pretty obvious to me what should go in there but hey, you never know. But in
any case, I'm not filling in the fields with bogus or example data as that
would violate my æsthetic sensibilities with the page. 

[1] http://diveintomark.org/archives/2002/07/17.html#day_28_labeling_form_elements
[2] http://diveintomark.org/archives/2002/06/14.html#day_5_belated_introduction
[3] http://bobby.cast.org/html/en/index.jsp
[4] http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/#wc-priority-2
[5] http://www.google.com/logos/Logo_40wht.gif
[6] http://bobby.cast.org/html/en/index.jsp
[7] http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/forms.html#h-17.9.1
[8] http://bobby.cast.org/bobby/bobbyServlet?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fboston.conman.org%2F&output=Submit&gl=wcag1-aaa#P3
[9] http://bobby.cast.org/bobby/html/en/gls/g109.html

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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