I have recently been re-evaluating my thinking on the subject of
designing semantic forms and the use of fieldsets has raised a few
questions for me. What I'd like to know is: at what point does it become
semantically correct to include a fieldset? (Presentational effects
aside) My first thought is that any time you have two or more related
fields, a fieldset could be effectively used to group them together so
that the browser knows what goes with what, therefore making it more
accessible for future cases. If this assumption is true, does that mean
a fieldset element should ALWAYS be used anytime two or more form fields
exist in association? That seems slightly overkill, but if it's semantic
benefits are as aforementioned, then the extra work would be merited and
certainly not in vain.
This leads into my next question: should a legend always be included
inside a fieldset, even if it's not going to be displayed (via display:
none)? It seems like it would only make sense to provide the browser
with an explanation of what the collection of form fields were purposed
for, regardless if you're leveraging the default rendering it provides.
I'd imagine audio browsers could use the legend element to provide a
blind user with an explanation to what they could potentially fill out,
and if such was the case, that would make the use of legends a great
accessibility tool.
I'd hate for the fieldset and legend elements to become abused to the
point where they're carelessly thrown into markup without any second
guessing, much like divs can be. But if their semantic purpose is close
to what I've stated above then I'd certainly like to review how I could
increase the overall accessibility of my form designs.
If anyone could please provide some assistance in this matter, I would
be extremely appreciative. Thanks so much.
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Jonathan Carter
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