Re: What makes a failure? (@summary, et al)

Hi henri,
>I still think that the best way to proceed would be getting data on what experienced screen reader users actually choose to do when they can opt in or out of >having summaries read.

The most popular screenreader JAWS does not provide an option to turn
summary off/on, if it is there and is on a "data table" it is
announced, prefixed by with "summary"

The "experienced screen reader users" I have spoken to (marco zehe,
gregory rosmaita and janina sajka) indicated that they find the
summary information useful, when they encounter it.

regards
stevef

2009/6/8 Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi>:
> (This was supposed to go to list. Resending.)
>
> On Jun 8, 2009, at 13:09, Steven Faulkner wrote:
>
>>> - this means that accessibility is harmed by the summary attribute.
>>
>> As I have pointed out previously on this point, many of the bogus
>> examples of summary attribute use are never announced by screen
>> readers (that support @summary) as they are found on tables used for
>> layout, which the screen readers ignore via the use of heuristics to
>> filter out inapropriate table use.
>
> Indeed, that mitigates one side of harm and is easy to forget. (I forgot
> about it earlier today.) It doesn't mitigate the harm that the opportunity
> cost of writing bogus summaries that never get announced poses, though.
>
> When summary does get announced, where is the data that follows the best
> practice found? Is it only found on .gov sites or intranets? Based on
> Philip's survey, the data out there on the public Web is overwhelmingly
> bogus or at best caption-like in character even if a heuristic prunes some
> of the data out.
>
> (I still think that the best way to proceed would be getting data on what
> experienced screen reader users actually choose to do when they can opt in
> or out of having summaries read. Having that data would make most of the
> surrounding debate moot, since it would be pretty pointless to argue with
> the revealed preference of the actual constituency regardless of which way
> the preference actually goes.)
>
> --
> Henri Sivonen
> hsivonen@iki.fi
> http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
>
>
>



-- 
with regards

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

www.paciellogroup.com | www.wat-c.org
Web Accessibility Toolbar -
http://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/wat-ie-about.html

Received on Monday, 8 June 2009 11:15:50 UTC