Accessible Forms
Make sure your form’s layout doesn’t confuse people
When people read a newspaper, they expect to see a heading first, followed by content that pertains to the heading. Likewise, when people see a form, it makes more sense to do this:
…than this…
If you put a text box before its label, some aural screen readers may try to put the “Name” label with the input box for “Email”, because it expects the label to come before the input box.
It works the same way with password and upload boxes. However, checkboxes and radio buttons work exactly the opposite way:
Simply put, form labels should always go after checkboxes and radio buttons, but before any other <input> that requires a label.
Laying forms out in tables
First of all, I would never, ever, ever suggest you do this, because tables should only be used for tabular data like statistics and such. However, if you really feel you absolutely must use a table, don’t ever do this:
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Great post! Thanks for sharing!
You’re welcome, jadegreen. Thank you for your comment.
Hi Lesa,
I want to know what coding is involved if you just want a portion of a story to be read on one page and the remainder of the paragraphs to be read on another page (i.e. “Read More…”). Do you have to create a new page and how do you link it up with the main page since it’s not on the main navigation link? Could you please give me an example of both the HTML and CSS codes to use. This Much appreciated.
CAn anyone advise what code I can implement if I want my web siteto be able to truncate paragraph or news items and direct the reader to “Read more…” Also how can I code to “Archive” new/stories? Any help wil be appreciated. Thanks all.
Sorry I missed your question before, bchitala.
Are you using WordPress? WordPress does this automatically.
Hi Lesa. No I’m not using WordPress. I have never tried WordPress at all. I’m just learning how to design a website from scratch. Right now I’m doing a lot of reading but can’t figure out how truncating stories is coded. thanks for getting back to me.
You’re welcome, bchitala. Sorry it took me a few days to know you had posted.
What you’re describing is done with a content management system (CMS) that uses server-side programming and a database, which WordPress will easily manage for you. While I do have one PHP tutorial here and plan to add more in the future, building a proper CMS from scratch is far more extensive than including a few files or creating a mail form, and requires extensive knowledge of 4 different languages: PHP, MySQL, (x)HTML, and CSS.