- From: Leif Halvard Silli <xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no>
- Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2010 23:17:05 +0100
- To: Leif Halvard Silli <xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no>
- Cc: Charles McCathieNevile <chaals@opera.com>, "Gregory J. Rosmaita" <oedipus@hicom.net>, Gez Lemon <g.lemon@webprofession.com>, public-html-a11y@w3.org
Leif Halvard Silli, Tue, 2 Mar 2010 21:14:28 +0100: >>> If the reason for making it an >>> element is that authors can provide richer markup, then I think we're >>> definitely outside the territory of a concise overview of the >>> structure of a data table, and more into summary being a long >>> description of the table. >> >> Or many other things. > > One purpose of for an element solution is documented in HTML4 and > WCAG20 H73: Avoid to duplicate content from the caption in the summary. > If the element is easy to display as part of the caption, then that > issue will solve itself. And for that reason, an element, such as > <summary>, as child of <caption> might be better than a element as > child of <table>? > > <caption>Table 1: Earnings > <summary> … description of the table's organization … visible or > invisible … author decides …</summary> > </caption> > > A second purpose for an element solution is that the table summary > should be programmatically detectable - according to WCAG2. This is > much simpler to achieve via a dedicated feature, such as @summary or > <summary>, rather than through @aria-labelledby. Of course, it will > have to be specified how to use aria-labelledby="" to achieve this > purpose. But never the less, aria-labelledby will be subject to rotten > links and duplicate ids etc. Third purpose: To keep the table's caption clean/useful - even to AT users: it separates the label that identifies the <table> from the label that explains it organisation. -- leif halvard silli
Received on Tuesday, 2 March 2010 22:17:40 UTC