Discussion on: Fieldset, this stranger.

[Brian Kephart]

Thanks for the response! I did read the spec, and every example I saw, including the one copied in your response, has at least two control elements within the fieldset. The case I was asking about is a single control element with a label, like this example from your post:

<fieldset>
  <input type="checkbox" id="enableCalc">
  <label for="enableCalc">Enable calc</label>
</fieldset>

I agree that this approach improves the clarity of the markup versus using a <div>, but I could not find such usage in the spec. Nothing in the spec says you cannot have a set with just one control element, though, and it clearly works, so I don't think the spec has any real problem with it.

Like I commented before, though, I found a few accessibility resources that specifically say not to use <fieldset> unless you need to group multiple controls together. No reason is given for the warning, but these same resources support the use of <fieldset> for groups of controls, so there seems to be something about this specific usage that is a potential issue, which is why I asked for your comment. I think the recommendation is just trying to avoid unnecessary verbosity when the markup is read by a screen reader, but I'm not sure.

[Mattia Astorino]

Even the table spec doesn't tell you to not use them for layouts :).
Fieldset can also be nested, so it's not correct to use it only to group radios.