#32339: Accessibility issues with Django forms as_table, as_ul, as_p rendering
helpers
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Reporter: Thibaud | Owner: nobody
Colas |
Type: Bug | Status: new
Component: Forms | Version: master
Severity: Normal | Keywords: accessibility,
Triage Stage: | forms, wcag
Unreviewed | Has patch: 0
Needs documentation: 0 | Needs tests: 0
Patch needs improvement: 0 | Easy pickings: 0
UI/UX: 1 |
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The Django forms API has three methods available to render whole forms at
once: `as_table`, `as_ul`, `as_p`. All of these three have issues of
varying severity. Although it’s not always the case that developers rely
on those methods when implementing forms, I think it’s important for
Django to not provide APIs that make it easy for developers to do the
wrong thing – just like with security, Django should have safe defaults.
Like [https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/32338 #32338] – those issues
are with the vanilla rendering of forms, and also with related
documentation code snippets. If you want to troubleshoot this, here is the
form I used for testing:
- Live form as_p: http://django-admin-
tests.herokuapp.com/forms/example_form/p/
- Live form as_ul: http://django-admin-
tests.herokuapp.com/forms/example_form/ul/
- Live form as_table: http://django-admin-
tests.herokuapp.com/forms/example_form/table/
- Form fields definitions:
https://github.com/thibaudcolas/django_admin_tests/blob/main/django_admin_tests/forms.py
- Template:
https://github.com/thibaudcolas/django_admin_tests/blob/main/django_admin_tests/templates/django_admin_tests/example_form.html
== as_table
`as_table` is the most problematic of all form output styles. Although
technically tables for layout can be ok (see WebAIM’s
[https://webaim.org/techniques/tables/ Creating Accessible Tables]), I
think the general consensus is that they should be a thing of the past.
Depending on how screen readers interpret the markup, there is a very real
chance that they will incorrectly announce the table with tabular
navigation, made for tabular data. This will make the form at best very
verbose to navigate, at worst plain confusing.
There are well-established workarounds to this keep on using tables like
this (like adding [https://w3c.github.io/aria-practices/#presentation_role
role="presentation"] to the `<table>`), but there really is no reason to
use tables for layout these days, as identical or better layouts can be
done with CSS (for example for a responsive form). I think this can also
potentially be a source of confusion for developers – so Django shouldn’t
encourage potentially-misused markup.
== as_ul
`as_ul` essentially has the same problem as `as_table` but to a lesser
extent. Wrapping whole forms in list items makes the form more verbose to
navigate, and can be a bit confusing, but that’s about it. Semantically
it’s also incorrect (unordered lists means the order of items doesn’t
matter). I don’t think it’s very problematic, but it’s also not very
useful to start with.
== as_p
The `as_p` markup doesn’t cause any accessibility issues that I’m aware
of, but it can be problematic nonetheless because `p` only allows
[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/Guide/HTML/Content_categories#phrasing_content phrasing
content] (see for example [https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/31189
#31189]).
From a pure "end-user outcome" perspective there is no problem with this
to my knowledge, but again I think Django should err on the side of safe
defaults and not encourage patterns that can lead to invalid HTML, when
developers use custom widgets that would contain tags invalid in phrasing
content (for example a date picker). Even if browsers handle the invalid
HTML just fine, it’s very common for accessibility testing tools to
implement HTML validation rules, and Django should strive to minimize
false positives with those tools if there are obvious alternatives.
== Proposed solution
I would recommend removing all three output styles. Even if their output
can be tweaked to circumvent those issues, they make it too easy to do the
wrong thing. They also discourage developers from using `<fieldset>` and
`<legend>` to appropriately group related fields. Although this isn’t
needed all the time, for larger forms it’s important for there to be clear
sections.
If Django wants to provide a shortcut to render whole forms, I think it
should be based on `<div>` (optionally with a class name), so it still
allows for layout niceties but works as expect for all users otherwise. I
think the documentation should also be updated to cover why it’s also
desirable to render fields individually so they can be grouped in
sections.
---
I realize this would be a breaking change, with a lengthy deprecation
period. During this deprecation period, it would also be great to:
- Document the gotchas with the three shortcuts.
- Recommend marking up `<table>` and `<ul>` with [https://w3c.github.io
/aria-practices/#presentation_role role="presentation"], so screen readers
ignore the semantics.
--
Ticket URL: <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/32339>
Django <https://code.djangoproject.com/>
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