Hi Courtney, Another thing to consider is internationalization. We abandoned the use of field label colons for string replacement as it pertains to internationalization. For example, in languages like Arabic that read right to left, it looks strange to have a colon placed at what becomes the beginning of the label. (I know, the whole page layout should be re-oriented, but many times that is not in the cards, resource-wise.)
If you're already using "label" tags appropriately, there's probably a way to strip out the colons programatically so you don't waste time doing this manually. Hope this helps! Kind regards, Angel Anderson On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 10:12 AM, Caroline Jarrett < caroline.jarr...@effortmark.co.uk> wrote: > > Subject: [IxDA Discuss] To use a colon or not to use a colon after > > field labels > > > > Could anyone help me on the subject of whether to use colons after field > labels. I have found one accessibility paper and a few other > not-so-respected sources that indicate that colons after field labels help > screen reader users, as well as normal vision users, to expect an input > field. However, after years of including colons after field labels, our > copy > dept now maintains that a colon is punctuation and shouldn't be included > after field labels. I've also found Jarrett's, "No one cares about colons > but UX people" and Luke W doesn't mention it in his book :(. Has anyone > fought this battle before? Do you have any sources that you could point me > to? > > You have accurately summarised my article: > http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article3112.asp > > As Luke doesn't mention colons, maybe we should add "and not even a lot of > them" to the end of the summary :-) > > But maybe you missed the follow-up one? > http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article3200.asp > > That discussed the problem of screen readers and colons at the end of > labels. > > So far as I have been able to find out since then, it used to be the case > in > the Olden Days that screen readers relied on colons as a cue about where > the > label might be. These days, they rely more on the actual mark-up. So > provided that you are using "label" tags appropriately, the screen reader > doesn't need the colon. The user may or may not hear 'colon' depending on > whether the screen reader is set up to read the punctuation. > > My suggestion: estimate how long it would take to take all the colons off > the existing forms. Ask your copy people if they truly wish to put that > time > in, compared to all the other cool/useful/revenue-earning (delete as > applicable) things that you could be doing. Might help them to make a > decision. > > Best > Caroline Jarrett > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
