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Even with nesting you still need for/id attributes to make it accessible to common voice command software: https://www.tpgi.com/should-form-labels-be-wrapped-or

Even with nesting you still need for/id attributes to make it accessible to common voice command software: https://www.tpgi.com/should-form-labels-be-wrapped-or-separate/ https://www.tpgi.com/should-form-labels-be-wrapped-or-separa...

rafram 2y ago
That’s the voice control software’s problem.
- robin_reala 2y ago
  At the end of the day it’s your users’ problem. Ideally their assistive tech would work, but if it doesn’t and you’ve got an easy fix then you should implement that fix.
  - 7bit 2y ago
    I disagree. Of course you could fix that. But that would mean that you can fix a thousand and one issues that's caused by other softwares erroneous content handling. Which leads to nothing but bloat and introduces just more code that could come with more bugs. If your software works and is designed as intended, then sometimes it stays the users problem. Unfortunate, but otherwise problems will stay forever.
    - robin_reala 2y ago
      Your software isn’t working, because the user cannot use it. Your UI is always a combination of whatever hardware and software come together to give an experience. Everyone chooses to marginalise certain segments of users’ technologies – I don’t support IE any more of course – but I typically won’t drop support for technologies that are vital assistive technologies for that segment of users. (If you need a personal story to bring it home, the only way my dad, a programmer in the 70s-90s, could continue to use computers when he suffered from MND / ALS, was to use voice control software.)
      - wruza 2y ago
        You’re basically enabling for these shitty variants of voice control software to exist. Html, css and js allow dor more granularity in how ui works, but using them this way is just absurd.
        robin_reala 2y ago
        shrug They exist regardless, and the users have no real other options. I’ve found in my career that devs tend to fall into the “caring about the effect” and “caring about the artefact” buckets, and I guess you’re in the second category? There’s no one right place to be – without people in the second we‘d have less effective solutions overall – but I hope your team is also balanced by people in the first.
- raincole 2y ago
  And unless you're google or facebook, people will not change their voice control software for your website.
melchizedek6809 2y ago
Not sure I agree with the conclusion of that article, according to it, only 2 screen readers don't support nested labels, I couldn't find statistics on how prevalent these are, but there are a lot of alternative screen readers one could use which might support nested labels since they're not mentioned there (I've mainly heard of JAWS, which isn't mentioned there), so it doesn't seem to be an inherent limitation of assistive technology, just a bug in some (popular?) screen readers.
- robin_reala 2y ago
  VoiceControl and Naturally Speaking aren’t screen readers: they’re voice command software. They’re designed for people with mobility problems, not vision problems. There’s no inherent limitation here that couldn’t be solved by bug fixes, but they’re the two major pieces of assistive tech in that sector so can’t be dismissed without dismissing people who need that functionality.
  - melchizedek6809 2y ago
    Fair enough, so to test things out I've enabled Voice Control and tried whether it makes a difference how the elements were arranged: At least with Chrome, it does not make a difference! It correctly determined the label and I could just tell it to click on that particular checkbox. Since Dragon Naturally Speaking doesn't seem to have a trial, as well as having a broken shop page you can't order from, I can't give it a test, but that articles advice seems rather questionable to me.
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    That feels somehow like building your website for IE6 because some people still use them.
- dncornholio 2y ago
  The article is right. A nested input with a for attribute is always better than an input without one. Maybe not for the screenreaders of today, but maybe for the screenreaders of tomorrow.

rafram 2y ago

That’s the voice control software’s problem.

robin_reala 2y ago
At the end of the day it’s your users’ problem. Ideally their assistive tech would work, but if it doesn’t and you’ve got an easy fix then you should implement that fix.
- 7bit 2y ago
  I disagree. Of course you could fix that. But that would mean that you can fix a thousand and one issues that's caused by other softwares erroneous content handling. Which leads to nothing but bloat and introduces just more code that could come with more bugs. If your software works and is designed as intended, then sometimes it stays the users problem. Unfortunate, but otherwise problems will stay forever.
  - robin_reala 2y ago
    Your software isn’t working, because the user cannot use it. Your UI is always a combination of whatever hardware and software come together to give an experience. Everyone chooses to marginalise certain segments of users’ technologies – I don’t support IE any more of course – but I typically won’t drop support for technologies that are vital assistive technologies for that segment of users. (If you need a personal story to bring it home, the only way my dad, a programmer in the 70s-90s, could continue to use computers when he suffered from MND / ALS, was to use voice control software.)
    - wruza 2y ago
      You’re basically enabling for these shitty variants of voice control software to exist. Html, css and js allow dor more granularity in how ui works, but using them this way is just absurd.
      - robin_reala 2y ago
        shrug They exist regardless, and the users have no real other options. I’ve found in my career that devs tend to fall into the “caring about the effect” and “caring about the artefact” buckets, and I guess you’re in the second category? There’s no one right place to be – without people in the second we‘d have less effective solutions overall – but I hope your team is also balanced by people in the first.
raincole 2y ago
And unless you're google or facebook, people will not change their voice control software for your website.

melchizedek6809 2y ago

Not sure I agree with the conclusion of that article, according to it, only 2 screen readers don't support nested labels, I couldn't find statistics on how prevalent these are, but there are a lot of alternative screen readers one could use which might support nested labels since they're not mentioned there (I've mainly heard of JAWS, which isn't mentioned there), so it doesn't seem to be an inherent limitation of assistive technology, just a bug in some (popular?) screen readers.

robin_reala 2y ago
VoiceControl and Naturally Speaking aren’t screen readers: they’re voice command software. They’re designed for people with mobility problems, not vision problems. There’s no inherent limitation here that couldn’t be solved by bug fixes, but they’re the two major pieces of assistive tech in that sector so can’t be dismissed without dismissing people who need that functionality.
- melchizedek6809 2y ago
  Fair enough, so to test things out I've enabled Voice Control and tried whether it makes a difference how the elements were arranged: At least with Chrome, it does not make a difference! It correctly determined the label and I could just tell it to click on that particular checkbox. Since Dragon Naturally Speaking doesn't seem to have a trial, as well as having a broken shop page you can't order from, I can't give it a test, but that articles advice seems rather questionable to me.
- Aeolun 2y ago
  That feels somehow like building your website for IE6 because some people still use them.
dncornholio 2y ago
The article is right. A nested input with a for attribute is always better than an input without one. Maybe not for the screenreaders of today, but maybe for the screenreaders of tomorrow.