Re: hidden versus discoverable meta-data

Tantek Celik, Thu, 14 Jan 2010 20:06:39 +0000:

[...]

I agree that @summary has a problem that it shares with other 
invisible/derived data that one has to manually add/update for human 
consumption. 

> Or one can learn from those lessons, and:
> 
> 1. Stop creating any new invisible/hidden/dark data 
> formats/features/patterns which we know would be doomed to eventually 
> contain rotten/dead content.
> 
> 2. Obsolete or better yet drop altogether existing 
> invisible/hidden/dark data formats/features/patterns and recommend 
> use of visible data formats/features/patterns instead.

I'll just repeat [1] that WCAG requires that the table summary should 
be possible to "programatically determine" (as a table summary) for AT. 

Saying, as the HTML5 language spec draft says, that you can just type 
the summary inside <caption>, does not make the table summary possible 
to programmatically determine for AT. And I don't think I will call it 
to "learn from those lessons" either: The current HTML5 language spec 
draft claims to have learned two things: That @summary is a failure 
_and_ that table summaries do not need to be possible to 
programmatically determine.

For the <figure> element, there has been a proposal about a caption 
attribute - applying that attribute to any element, would make that 
element a caption.

I don't want to evaluate @caption here and now. But a similar approach 
should be possible for making any element a table summary as well. This 
would make it possible to programmatically determine the table summary 
- such as WCAG 2.0 asks for.

[1] 
http://www.w3.org/mid/20100108025355728726.d23e8541@xn--mlform-iua.no
-- 
leif halvard silli

Received on Friday, 15 January 2010 20:53:07 UTC