2.17 Properly position the labels of form controls

Contents

• Rationale for this guideline.
• Directions and techniques for labelling form controls.
• How to check labelling form controls.

WAI checkpoint 10.2

Full WAI text: "Until user agents support explicit associations between labels and form controls, for all form controls with implicitly associated labels, ensure that the label is properly positioned." A user agent is a piece of software for accessing Web content. User agents could be desktop graphical browsers, text browsers, voice browsers, mobile phones, multimedia players, plug-ins, and some software assistive technologies used in conjunction with browsers such as screen readers, screen magnifiers, and voice recognition software.

Examples of form control elements include text entry fields and checkboxes. Labels should be associated with form elements by locating them in close proximity to each other.

"Labels" are the names of form control elements, e.g. "first name" could be the label for a form element which could be a text entry field. In this case, the field name could be visually presented immediately above or to the left of the field. Associating the label with the form control by positioning the two as near as possible is called implicit labelling.

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