- From: Laura Carlson <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>
- Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2007 13:07:44 -0500
- To: "HTML WG" <public-html@w3.org>
fyi... don raikes <don.raikes@oracle.com> wrote: [1] > Responding to the question of how much headers= is used, Oracle's > web-based solutions all use the headers= attribute and have since > roughly 2001/2002. > > In fact that has been one of our requirements for making our software > section 508 compliant. Also Gez Lemon wrote a related blog post [2] on the issue. He has an An Overlaid Table Examplea nd he talks about backwards compatibility: > Overlaid and other types of irregular tables are very rare on the > web, but we still require a mechanism to mark them up correctly. > Ideally, we could do with something more generic, like the labelledby > attribute from WAI-ARIA's state and properties Module , as this > could be used to describe the associated headers for each cell, label > for a form control, and so on. There is no mention of a generic > attribute for labelling objects in the HTML 5 global attributes . > Also, backwards compatibility is a concern for the HTML 5 working > group, as they include a font element for backwards compatibility > with older WYSIWYG editors. > > The font element is purely presentational - if it wasn't supported, > the worst thing that would happen in a user agent is that the text > would be displayed without the presentational information. It doesn't > create an accessibility barrier in the same way that removing > something as vital for comprehension as the headers attribute would. > > There is no doubt that we require something that allows irregular > data tables to be marked up so that they are understandable by > assistive technology, and this is something that the headers > attribute does adequately right now. I would love to see something > more generic introduced that would also work in other areas or rich > internet applications, like WAI-ARIA's labelledby attribute, but at > the same time, we need to ensure whatever is proposed doesn't break > the web. W3C technologies should be built considering accessibility > from the ground up. I do hope that the HTML Working Group > participants change their stance on this issue and consider keeping > the headers attribute, as we definitely need it to support > accessibility. Laura [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/wai-xtech/2007May/0072.html [2] http://juicystudio.com/article/html-scope-headers-debate.php -- Laura L. Carlson http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdesign/
Received on Friday, 1 June 2007 18:07:49 UTC