7.1 Associate labels explicitly with their controls
The New Zealand Web Standards 2.0 were released in March 2009 and replace the previous version, the New Zealand Government Web Standards 1.0 (below). See Meeting the standards for more information.
The Standard
7.1 Until user agents support explicit associations between labels and form controls, for all form controls with implicitly associated labels, ensure that the label is properly positioned.
Guide to this standard
Use the HTML LABEL tag to explicitly associate labels with form controls.
Every descriptive label should be tagged as <label> and associated with the name of the field. The "for" attribute of the label tag is used by modern screen readers to identify a field reached by tabbing. Without this, tabbing between fields is completely disorienting.
The label should immediately precede the control in code. Screen readers read left to right. This will make it easy to read the form, and make sense of it with a screen reader - as stated by the Irish National Disability Authority.
This standard covers the W3C WAI checkpoints 10.2 and 12.4 for NZ government agencies.
Rationale for this standard
Poor label and control layout is potentially ambiguous to all users. Likewise, with assistive technologies such as screen readers, and more so for users with visual impairment.
W3C gives a good example (Example 3) of potential ambiguity for users (and for screen readers) with a poor label/control layout
