RE: indenting in a table

The real harm is in using absolute (rather than relative) measurements for
font sizes.  Gutter space is not an issue.  You are correct that the WCAG
does not discriminate between uses.  Taken at its face, 3.4 requires
relative units for images!  (Hmm, should we correct this?  I've previously
advocated for a very literal "interpretation" of the WCAG.  I certainly
don't want that here!)  Bobby, for its part, reports an error when the only
contents of a particular table cell is a single image.  The only way not to
get the warning for this situation is to omit the cell width.  This "work
around" results, of course, with degraded browser performance!  For your
particular example, you could use something like "1em" which would probably
work fine, and avoid the spurious warning.  The purist on this list would
tell you to keep coding the way you know to be proper -- since this isn't a
legitimate accessibility concern, you understand that this particular Bobby
"error" can be dismissed.  I worry about the implications of encouraging
people to use "common sense" or their own judgment and feeling free to
ignore Bobby error messages.  Sure, I trust YOUR assessment of the Bobby
report -- but not necessary most peoples!  Personally, I have modified
(perfectly accessible) pages solely to surpass irrelevant Bobby warnings and
errors.  I imagine many here on this list have been influenced in our coding
by Bobby's eccentricities.


> ----------
> From: 	Robert Neff
> Sent: 	Sunday, May 6, 2001 10:36 AM
> To: 	W3c-Wai-Gl
> Subject: 	FW: indenting in a table
> 
> cross posting - help...
> 
>  -----Original Message-----
> From: 	Robert Neff [mailto:rneff@bbnow.net] 
> Sent:	Sunday, May 06, 2001 9:29 AM
> To:	W3c-Wai-Ig
> Subject:	indenting in a table
> 
> i am using tables for layout and want to move the text away from the edge.
> I am using "margin-left : 5px" however, if i read bobby and WCAG right,
> this is not allowed.  by using an absolute size over realtive, i am not
> allowing this to be resized.
> would like guidance on this and also how do you feel if i rationalize the
> inability to size by stating this is an example where i have used
> stylesheets for structure to better postion the text regardless how the
> text is resized.
> 
> thanks and as i drill down into this, because i see the  stylesheets that
> are used by governement agencies as all over the place in applying
> relative versus absolute.