Those who don’t know about labels will attempt to click on the form elements themselves. The label might increase the clickable area around the element, but that doesn’t mean you need to steer people towards using it. Labels should be an aid for reading forms & interacting with forms. By pushing their use for directly interacting with the form, you’re building up an expectancy for all forms to work the same across all websites and browsers. Obviously, this is not the case. On the other hand, clicking on form items can be expected to always work the same.
Nathan de Vries
I don’t think this is the right approach.
Those who don’t know about labels will attempt to click on the form elements themselves. The label might increase the clickable area around the element, but that doesn’t mean you need to steer people towards using it. Labels should be an aid for reading forms & interacting with forms. By pushing their use for directly interacting with the form, you’re building up an expectancy for all forms to work the same across all websites and browsers. Obviously, this is not the case. On the other hand, clicking on form items can be expected to always work the same.
I guess I just don’t see any tangible benefits.