Re: Breaking Dependencies - @summary (FW: Call for Review: German WCAG 2.0 Candidate Authorized Translation)

one point to consider in regards to the following statement that is being
quoted

"Although highly recommended by some webpage designers as a way of
summarizing the contents of a table, the "summary" attribute of the TABLE
tag is not sufficiently supported by major assistive technology
manufacturers to warrant recommendation."[1]

this advice was last updated "*June 21, 2001"*, the summary attribute is now
and has been supported by the major assistive technology manufacturers
(freedom scientific & gwmicro) for some time.


[1] http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/guide/1194.22.htm#(g)<http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/guide/1194.22.htm#%28g%29>

regards
stevef


2009/8/4 Joe D Williams <joedwil@earthlink.net>

> In addition, I believe that there is a little matter of a burden of proof.
>>
>
>
> Rather than looking at what is up for review now, let's have a look at what
> are the best sources I have found about the roots of this discussion.
>
> (1) First (from Ian using some guidance from our gov's access board
> document and other data):
>
> http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/guide/1194.22.htm#(g)<http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/guide/1194.22.htm#%28g%29>
>
> "Although highly recommended by some webpage designers as a way of
> summarizing the contents of a table, the "summary" attribute of the TABLE
> tag is not sufficiently supported by major assistive technology
> manufacturers to warrant recommendation."
>
> (2) Then (from John using some guidance from our W3C WAI/WCAG documents):
>
> http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/#gl-table-markup
>
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20081211/H73.html
>
> http://www.eramp.com/david/tablesample2.htm
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20081211/H63.html
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20081211/H51.html
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20081211/H39.html
>
> "H73: Using the summary attribute of the table element to give an overview
> of data tables
> ,,,
> The objective of this technique [using @summary] is to provide a brief
> overview of how data has been organized into a table or a brief explanation
> of how to navigate the table. The summary attribute of the table element
> makes this information available to people who use screen readers; the
> information is not displayed visually."
>
>
> At this time (even though I think I probably should stay clear of this
> because my actual keenest interest is just with <object> and bug 7075 and i
> see tables as more than likely just a weak fallback for better ways to
> provide interaction and information) all this looks sort of like the Editor
> made a very conscious decision to raise everyones awareness of this problem
> of different understandings and recommendations for @summary by following a
> source that is basically outside but interested in providing feedback to the
> W3C. From the WCAG and WAI publications it looks like those folks have been
> working on providing some standards for evaluating the effectiveness of
> @summary, @caption, and @scope and others for some time including now and
> that the existing stuff may well be direct responses to the gov's article.
>
> Since I am all for innovation, resonance, and synergy leading to wide
> consenus and many successful implementations it seems entirely reasonable
> for HTML5 to depend upon the current keystrokes of the specialty groups and
> not even bother with any details of usage in HTML5. Just deal with its
> functionality as a text container. Any competent accessibiity author will
> need further research of other more targeted W3C info and will also need to
> figure out what to expect from the various assistive tech agents out there
> anyway. So why bother with details until some/any HTML browsers do
> accessibility 'natively'. Later on, when the specialty group(s) has some
> updated research and new recommendations, it will be a lot easier to update
> HTML5.
>
> Thank You All and Best Regards,
> Joe
>
>
>


-- 
with regards

Steve Faulkner
Technical Director - TPG Europe
Director - Web Accessibility Tools Consortium

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