Recommendation to change conversation.js

[mandaris]

I was doing some accessibility testing of my site using the ARC toolkit and it flagged an issue with the textfield that conversation.js places on the page.

<textarea name="text" rows="4" cols="50" disabled=""></textarea>

It’s stating that the name=”text” is not an accessible name and points to the WCAG guidelines. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2

Can we name it conversation-text or something more descriptive? I tried looking for the javascript on GitHub but wasn’t able to find it right away.

No hurries or worries

[sod]

As a web accessibility practitioner, seeing you work on accessibility fills my heart with joy. Thanks, @mandaris!

I’m a little confused about this one, though. The value of the name attribute shouldn’t matter too much as it’s not announced by accessibility tools like screen readers.

I wonder if the ARC toolkit is really complaining about there not being a label for the textarea, because that is in fact a problem.

Do you mind trying this:

1. On the page you’re testing, open up the web inspector.
2. Inspect the textarea and edit its HTML.
3. Wrap it inside a label, like this:

<label>
  Comment
  <textarea name="text" rows="4" cols="50" disabled=""></textarea>
</label>

4. Now run the ARC test again, does the error go away?

P.S. To be clear, descriptive name attributes is a good thing too!

[mandaris]

Sorry about the long delay!

I made the change via developer tools and I’m getting the same error.

I don’t think it’s a big issue, because I’ve grown to dislike ARC for items that do not effect the user.

[sod]

It looks like the label element fell off somehow. In your screenshot, the path ends with /form/p[2]/textarea but it should be /form/p[2]/label/textarea.