Research e-Labs

Vote for an accessibility enhancement to Wordpress.

October 8th, 2008 by Matthew Ross

Visit http://wordpress.org/extend/ideas/

Find/search for the idea:
“search - add title tag, make it WCAG 2 compliant / accessibility”

Rate it! (a 5 of course!)

Details

The search form with no label element for the search field is not W3C accessibilty compliant.

To make it compliant for the upcoming WCAG 2 guidelines (links below), it simply needs a title tag added to the search field.

file: /wp-includes/widgets.php

in: function wp_widget_search($args) {

change:

<input type=”text” name=”s” id=”s” size=”15″ />

to:

<input type=”text” name=”s” id=”s” size=”15″
title=”<?php echo attribute_escape(__(’Search’)); ?>” />

which by default creates the HTML output:

<input type=”text” name=”s” id=”s” size=”15″ title=”Search” />

References

How to meet WCAG 2.0
http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/20080430/

Accessible Froms using WCAG 2.0
http://www.usability.com.au/resources/wcag2/

H65: Using the title attribute to identify form controls when the label element cannot be used
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/H65.html

(117 votes, average: 2.71 out of 5)

Tags: forms, wcag, wcag 2

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 at 3:49 pm under Developer Resources, Standards & Compliance. You can leave a response, or trackback from your site.

2 Responses to “Vote for an accessibility enhancement to Wordpress.”

1. Desiree Sturdevant says:

   October 17th, 2008 at 9:03 am

   My blog in on wordpress and they could definitely use some work in their accessibility. I am using jaws and am totally blind, and while I can get what I need to done, it takes a lot of effort and is difficult to find where I should put my posts.

2. Matthew Ross says:

   October 21st, 2008 at 12:10 pm

   Hi Desiree

   Thank you for your comment.

   We have also been working to make this site an implementation example for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0.

   The post describing this is at
   http://research.elabs.govt.nz/wcag-2-candidate-recommendation-implementation/

   I’d be interested to have your feedback on the accessibility of the nominated pages.