In the article Fieldsets, Legends and Screen Readers from The Paciello Group Blog, the author Roberto Castaldo provides some excellent insight into how the screen readers JAWS and Windows Eyes work with the Fieldset and Legend tags. (Fieldset and Legend tags are used to group elements within a form.)
He concludes that support in JAWS is better overall than Windows Eyes, and that even there are issues in both screen readers, developers must continue to implement these standards tags and other accessibility practices.
Some tips from the article include:
- Fieldset and Legend tags must be used together, never independently of each other.
- Keep the content of the Legend tag brief (the Legend may be read when each of the controls contained in a Fieldset receive focus.)
- In Windows Eyes, the option to read the Legend tag is off by default.
- Fieldsets may be nested.