Understanding SC 4.1.2:Name, Role, Value (Level A)
Intent
The intent of this Success Criterion is to ensure that Assistive Technologies (AT) can gather information about, activate(or set) and keep up to date on the status of user interface controls in the content.
When standard controls from accessible technologies are used, this process is straightforward. If the user interface elements are used according to specification the conditions of this provision will be met. (See examples of Success Criterion 4.1.2 below)
If custom controls are created, however, or interface elements are programmed (in code or script) to have a different role and/or function than usual, then additional measures need to be taken to ensure that the controls provide important information to assistive technologies and allow themselves to be controlled by assistive technologies.
A particularly important state of a user interface control is whether or not it has focus. The focus state of a control can be programmatically determined, and notifications about change of focus are sent to user agents and assistive technology. Other examples of user interface control state are whether or not a checkbox or radio button has been selected, or whether or not a collapsible tree or list node is expanded or collapsed.
Success Criterion 4.1.2 requires a programmatically determinable name for all user interface components. Names may be visible or invisible. Occasionally, the name must be visible, in which case it is identified as a label. Refer to the definition of name and label in the glossary for more information.
Benefits
- Providing role, state, and value information on all user interface components enables compatibility with assistive technology, such as screen readers, screen magnifiers, and speech recognition software, used by people with disabilities.
Examples
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Accessible APIs
A Java applet uses the accessibility API defined by the language.
Related Resources
Resources are for information purposes only, no endorsement implied.
Techniques
Each numbered item in this section represents a technique or combination of techniques that the WCAG Working Group deems sufficient for meeting this Success Criterion. However, it is not necessary to use these particular techniques. For information on using other techniques, see Understanding Techniques for WCAG Success Criteria, particularly the "Other Techniques" section.
Sufficient Techniques
Select the situation below that matches your content. Each situation includes techniques or combinations of techniques that are known and documented to be sufficient for that situation.
Situation A: If using a standard user interface component in a markup language (e.g., HTML):
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Using markup features to expose the name and role, allow user-settable properties to be directly set, and provide notification of changes using technology-specific techniques below:
Situation B: If using script or code to re-purpose a standard user interface component in a markup language:
Situation C: If using a standard user interface component in a programming technology:
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Using the accessibility API features of a technology to expose the names and roles, allow user-settable properties to be directly set, and provide notification of changes using technology-specific techniques below:
Situation D: If creating your own user interface component in a programming language:
Failures
The following are common mistakes that are considered failures of this Success Criterion by the WCAG Working Group.
- Failure due to using script to make div or span a user interface control in HTML
- Failure due to implementing custom controls that do not use an accessibility API
- Failure due to not updating text alternatives when changes to non-text content occur
- Failure of 1.3.1 and 4.1.2 due to the association of label and user interface controls not being programmatically determinable
- Failure of Success Criterion 4.1.2 due to the focus state of a user interface component not being programmatically determinable or no notification of change of focus state available
- Failure of Success Criterion 4.1.2 due to not providing names for each part of a multi-part form field, such as a US telephone number
- Failure of 2.4.4 due to using null alt on an image where the image is the only content in a link
Key Terms
picture created by a spatial arrangement of characters or glyphs (typically from the 95 printable characters defined by ASCII)
hardware and/or software that acts as a user agent, or along with a mainstream user agent, to provide functionality to meet the requirements of users with disabilities that go beyond those offered by mainstream user agents
functionality provided by assistive technology includes alternative presentations (e.g., as synthesized speech or magnified content), alternative input methods (e.g., voice), additional navigation or orientation mechanisms, and content transformations (e.g., to make tables more accessible).
Assistive technologies often communicate data and messages with mainstream user agents by using and monitoring APIs.
The distinction between mainstream user agents and assistive technologies is not absolute. Many mainstream user agents provide some features to assist individuals with disabilities. The basic difference is that mainstream user agents target broad and diverse audiences that usually include people with and without disabilities. Assistive technologies target narrowly defined populations of users with specific disabilities. The assistance provided by an assistive technology is more specific and appropriate to the needs of its target users. The mainstream user agent may provide important functionality to assistive technologies like retrieving Web content from program objects or parsing markup into identifiable bundles.
Assistive technologies that are important in the context of this document include the following:
- screen magnifiers, and other visual reading assistants, which are used by people with visual, perceptual and physical print disabilities to change text font, size, spacing, color, synchronization with speech, etc. in order to improve the visual readability of rendered text and images;
- screen readers, which are used by people who are blind to read textual information through synthesized speech or braille;
- text-to-speech software, which is used by some people with cognitive, language, and learning disabilities to convert text into synthetic speech;
- speech recognition software, which may be used by people who have some physical disabilities;
- alternative keyboards, which are used by people with certain physical disabilities to simulate the keyboard (including alternate keyboards that use head pointers, single switches, sip/puff and other special input devices.);
- alternative pointing devices, which are used by people with certain physical disabilities to simulate mouse pointing and button activations.
information and sensory experience to be communicated to the user by means of a user agent, including code or markup that defines the content's structure, presentation, and interactions
language that is spoken, written or signed (through visual or tactile means) to communicate with humans
See also sign language.
text or other component with a text alternative that is presented to a user to identify a component within Web content
A label is presented to all users whereas the name may be hidden and only exposed by assistive technology. In many (but not all) cases the name and the label are the same.
The term label is not limited to the label element in HTML.
text by which software can identify a component within Web content to the user
The name may be hidden and only exposed by assistive technology, whereas a label is presented to all users. In many (but not all) cases, the label and the name are the same.
This is unrelated to the name attribute in HTML.
any content that is not a sequence of characters that can be programmatically determined or where the sequence is not expressing something in human language
This includes ASCII Art (which is a pattern of characters), emoticons, leetspeak (which uses character substitution), and images representing text
rendering of the content in a form to be perceived by users
determined by software from author-supplied data provided in a way that different user agents, including assistive technologies, can extract and present this information to users in different modalities
Determined in a markup language from elements and attributes that are accessed directly by commonly available assistive technology.
Determined from technology-specific data structures in a non-markup language and exposed to assistive technology via an accessibility API that is supported by commonly available assistive technology.
set by software using methods that are supported by user agents, including assistive technologies
text or number by which software can identify the function of a component within Web content
A number that indicates whether an image functions as a hyperlink, command button, or check box.
a language using combinations of movements of the hands and arms, facial expressions, or body positions to convey meaning
sequence of characters that can be programmatically determined, where the sequence is expressing something in human language
Text that is programmatically associated with non-text content or referred to from text that is programmatically associated with non-text content. Programmatically associated text is text whose location can be programmatically determined from the non-text content.
An image of a chart is described in text in the paragraph after the chart. The short text alternative for the chart indicates that a description follows.
Refer to Understanding Text Alternatives for more information.
any software that retrieves and presents Web content for users
Web browsers, media players, plug-ins, and other programs — including assistive technologies — that help in retrieving, rendering, and interacting with Web content.
a part of the content that is perceived by users as a single control for a distinct function
Multiple user interface components may be implemented as a single programmatic element. "Components" here is not tied to programming techniques, but rather to what the user perceives as separate controls.
User interface components include form elements and links as well as components generated by scripts.
What is meant by "component" or "user interface component" here is also sometimes called "user interface element".
An applet has a "control" that can be used to move through content by line or page or random access. Since each of these would need to have a name and be settable independently, they would each be a "user interface component."
a non-embedded resource obtained from a single URI using HTTP plus any other resources that are used in the rendering or intended to be rendered together with it by a user agent
Although any "other resources" would be rendered together with the primary resource, they would not necessarily be rendered simultaneously with each other.
For the purposes of conformance with these guidelines, a resource must be "non-embedded" within the scope of conformance to be considered a Web page.
A Web resource including all embedded images and media.
A Web mail program built using Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX). The program lives entirely at http://example.com/mail, but includes an inbox, a contacts area and a calendar. Links or buttons are provided that cause the inbox, contacts, or calendar to display, but do not change the URI of the page as a whole.
A customizable portal site, where users can choose content to display from a set of different content modules.
When you enter "http://shopping.example.com/" in your browser, you enter a movie-like interactive shopping environment where you visually move around in a store dragging products off of the shelves around you and into a visual shopping cart in front of you. Clicking on a product causes it to be demonstrated with a specification sheet floating alongside. This might be a single-page Web site or just one page within a Web site.