Re: summary attribute compromise proposal

On Aug 4, 2009, at 3:11 PM, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:

>
> On Aug 4, 2009, at 2:26 PM, Julian Reschke wrote:
>
>> Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
>>> ...
>>> I believe existing AT will read the caption, text next to the  
>>> table, or text associated via aria-describedby.
>>> ...
>>
>> Even if it's set to hidden via CSS?
>
> It's my understanding that, yes, there are ways to hide content via  
> CSS which will result in it still being presented by screen readers.  
> I don't know which exact techniques work and which don't. I will do  
> some experiments based on advice from colleagues.

I'm told by better-informed people than me that the most widely  
interoperable way to hide content from visual UAs but not from screen  
readers is to absolute-position it by a large amount to the left -  
{ position: absolute; left: 9999px; }. This technique seems more  
kludgey than approaches like visibility: hidden, using an aural media  
style rule, or using 0 width and height. But apparently the more  
natural-seeming techniques don't work in older AT, don't work in older  
browsers, or have other technical problems (such as triggering search  
engine spam detection).

Regards,
Maciej