Thierry Koblentz wrote:
Some clients do not want [required on the end of each label], they
think it "pollutes the visual".
I'm sure the origin of the asterisk to indicate required fields was
literally that of a footnote:
Name:* ____________________
Email:* ____________________________
* Required field
As Thierry indicates, the original rationale behind this structure
was undoubtedly simply to avoid cluttering a form occupying limited
real estate with the word 'required' beside every required field.
However, it would be clumsy and irritating to mark this up so that
each asterisk were literally a hyperlink that jumped to the footnote
explaining that it was required.
At the same time, the word 'required' (at least in English) is so
short that I don't think its repetition would be irritating on an
aural page (which I suppose might be just my lack of sensitivity as
I'm not a screen reader user).
All this makes me try to come up with a way to present the asterisks
as footnote indicators visually but not aurally. One could present
the asterisks as background images on the abbrev elements, but as
such they wouldn't scale. If they were scalable foreground images,
they'd need an alt:
<img src="asterisk.jpg" alt="required" class="required" />
img.required {width: 1em;}
The problem would then be how to mark this up:
* Required fields
As plain text it would make sense to the visual users as the referent
for the asterisks but would seem a bit nonsensical to listeners.
Musingly,
Paul
__________________________
Paul Novitski
Juniper Webcraft Ltd.
http://juniperwebcraft.com
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