{"id":1672,"date":"2025-07-21T16:26:43","date_gmt":"2025-07-21T16:26:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/?p=1672"},"modified":"2025-07-21T16:41:22","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T16:41:22","slug":"super-short-note-placeholder-perfidy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/2025\/07\/21\/super-short-note-placeholder-perfidy\/","title":{"rendered":"super short note: placeholder perfidy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Patrick muses upon his Web Standards life, from the bad side of the moon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It’s a hint not a label<\/a><\/h2>\n

The placeholder<\/code> attribute is defined as:<\/p>\n

The\u00a0placeholder<\/code><\/dfn>\u00a0attribute represents a\u00a0short<\/em>\u00a0hint (a word or short phrase) intended to aid the user with data entry when the control has no value. A hint could be a sample value or a brief description of the expected format. The attribute, if specified, must have a value that contains no U+000A LINE FEED (LF) or U+000D CARRIAGE RETURN (CR) characters.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0placeholder<\/code><\/a>\u00a0attribute should not be used as an alternative to a\u00a0label<\/code><\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I made the mistake in a recent article<\/a> of using the placeholder<\/code> attribute content to illustrate when a label<\/a> is not correctly associated it does not provide an accessible name. placeholder<\/code> content is used as an accessible name of last resort<\/em> when other sources are absent. My motivation for using it was to include the names of my nearest and dearest friends (Dr Throater<\/em> for example!) in some form as I often do, not to give people the idea to use placeholder<\/code> themsleves, for anything!.<\/p>\n

For this I am truly sorry. I did not mean to imply that it was a good idea, in fact its a really shit idea for lots of reasons.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The HTML Accessibility API Mappings 1.0<\/a> name computation for input type=\"text\"<\/code> (amongst others) details where placeholder is in the acc name source pecking order:<\/em><\/p>\n

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