Re: Table Techniques - Summary

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lee Roberts" <leeroberts@roserockdesign.com>
To: "'Roberto Scano - IWA/HWG'" <rscano@iwa-italy.org>; "'John M
Slatin'" <john_slatin@austin.utexas.edu>; "'Matt May'" <mcmay@w3.org>;
"'Chris Ridpath'" <chris.ridpath@utoronto.ca>
Cc: "'WAI WCAG List'" <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2003 4:00 PM
Subject: RE: Table Techniques - Summary


>If we allow the non-use of the summary attribute we are, IMHO,
informing
>designers that it is not important.  The summary is just as important
as
>the alt.

I could agree with you but as in the normative documents is wrote, "alt"
must be present (also null, as explained also in some interesting
articles [1]. Using an empty summary, referring to the normative
guidelines, is not needed.

>As I've pointed out many times previously, a machine tester can
validate
>a null summary and ensure that there are no captions and th elements
>used.  The non-use of the summary attribute then makes the machine test
>invalid because the machine would have no idea whether the table is for
>layout or tabular information.

This means that this would be a machine-tester problem? Must the
guidelines adapted to machine tester esigence or to the W3C guidelines
and to the usability of the people with disability?

Btw, we could add a techniques that "suggest" to use empty summary for
layout tables but we cannot said: layout tables must have empty summary
because:

1- some people could find useful use summary for describe the layout
table (eg: "this table is formed by three columns: one for the menu, one
for the contents and one for the useful links")
2- the guidelines for HTML / XHTML, if we ask for a *must be present*,
need to be upgraded (adding in the HTML / XHTML Errata?)

>For example, in English the term layout would have to translated and
>understood by the machine tester if we allowed content in the summary
>attribute.  How many languages are there?  Would the machine tester
have
>to know each translation?

As suggested by John M. Slatin, the use of new attributes could be good
but these will be applied only since XHTML 2.0 and newer
raccomandations... for the *old* HTML 4.xx and XHTML 1.x this, i think,
could be a problem...

>Therefore, it is much easier to machine test for a null summary than
>content that would otherwise indicate the table is used for a layout.

Remember that the guidelines must be *testable* that this means not only
machine-testable... :)

>And again, the lack of a summary would lead designers to think that the
>summary attribute is not important.  Hence, the null summary provides
>valuable information.
>My recommendation is to require a null summary for layout tables.

What valuable information are given by an empty attribute for what the
guidelines don't have thinked to put it as *required* ?


Roberto Scano
---
[1] http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/alt/alt-text.html

Received on Friday, 15 August 2003 10:13:58 UTC