Re: function and impacts (was: @scope and @headers reform)

On Sep 25, 2008, at 11:52, Joshue O Connor wrote:

> Henri Sivonen wrote:
>> On Sep 25, 2008, at 10:58, Joshue O Connor wrote:
> <snip>
>>> It's not a desired stance /against/ native enabling semantics at  
>>> all. It's a distilled realization that this may be needed in order  
>>> to make more complex tables accessible in a way that will  
>>> practically work. Again, the semantic ideal vs the real world.  
>>> Supporting this behavior in the spec until UAs can deal with the  
>>> improved algorithm (and you make very valid points about the need  
>>> to improve it) would mean that HTML 5 will support older AT "out  
>>> of the box". On this issue anyway.
>> Why is making headers to point to td relevant to supporting legacy  
>> UAs? (See my previous email for an elaboration.)
>
> Allowing headers to reference a td would allow more complex tables  
> to be made accessible to users of assistive technology. The  
> suggested method works in current and older AT as support for header/ 
> id combinations is rather good. [1] [2] [3] [4]


Would it not work if the cell pointed to were marked up as a th  
instead of marking it up as a td? If a cell is a header to the point  
of having the headers attribute point to it, why isn't it a header to  
the point of being marked up as th?

(Guiding authors to mark their header cells as th is the onramp to get  
into a situation where the headers attribute can fade away in most  
cases once automatic association algorithm implementations enter the  
installed base.)

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/