RE: The problem with tables

Responses to david are marked using JRG:
>To me, the use of tables for layout is not going to go away in HTML;
>therefore, a more profitable direction would be to fix the relatively few
>number of screen readers, rather than the nigh-unto-infinite number of web
>pages.
>
>Thanks to Charles McCathieNevile for the excellent example of the problem
>with how screen readers deal with HTML content.  Why (he asked, getting
>ready to duck) are screen readers so stupid?  

JRG: Screen readers are designed to be a general purpose access to where
WWW browsing is only one of several tpes of software.  Some browsers are
getting smarter.  Henter-Joyce JAWS program manipulates the DOM of explorer
3.0 to relayour pages so there more accessible.

A table of contents in a
>left-most table cell is tagged as an identifiable HTML block.  Why haven't
>any of the screen readers been written to deal with HTML blocks, instead of
>just reading across and down?

JRG: I think we could ask authors to mark what the tables are being used so
that the rendering of the document could take into account the intedned use
of the table.  

>
>
>aloha
>--dae
>
>
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>david adam edelstein
>davadam@well.com
>http://www.well.com/~davadam
>
>"Most real growth involves an element of pain, certainly of confusion.
>If you're comfortable with what you're doing, you've been there before."
>--Jerry Uelsmann
> 
Jon Gunderson, Ph.D., ATP
Coordinator of Assistive Communication and Information Technology
Division of Rehabilitation - Education Services
University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign
1207 S. Oak Street
Champaign, IL 61820

Voice: 217-244-5870
Fax: 217-333-0248
E-mail: jongund@uiuc.edu
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