- From: Leonard R. Kasday <kasday@acm.org>
- Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 21:07:10 -0500
- To: Wendy A Chisholm <wendy@w3.org>, w3c-wai-er-ig@w3.org
At 05:49 PM 2/18/00 -0500, Wendy A Chisholm wrote: >Evaluation:TABLE elements should have a valid "summary" attribute for >table where it is difficult to determine the relationship among cells. I think this qualification is a definite help. However, the guidelines and the techniques document still omit this qualifiaction. cf. http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/#gl-table-markup and http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG10-HTML-TECHS/#tables I think it would be best to explicitly say that summaries, as well as other advanced markup like THEAD, etc be required only when they cannot be deduced from the straightforward table interpretation algorithm... except for a case mentioned below http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/tables.html#h-11.4.3 I was thinking for a while that they could be included in the "until browsers" section... but browser/screenreaders will-- or alt least should-- be able to interpret the algorithm before then anyway. ----- The one place where summaries would be useful, aside from headers arrangments that can't be deduced from the algorithm, would be when the data in the table, as opposed to the headings, show a pattern that is visually evident but difficult to perceive by listening to the table. Len ------- Leonard R. Kasday, Ph.D. Institute on Disabilities/UAP, and Department of Electrical Engineering Temple University 423 Ritter Annex, Philadelphia, PA 19122 kasday@acm.org http://astro.temple.edu/~kasday (215) 204-2247 (voice) (800) 750-7428 (TTY)
Received on Sunday, 20 February 2000 21:12:16 UTC