RE: Using a table to structure a form

To kind of give some clarification to my esteemed colleagues post: the client has stringent brand guidelines and these cannot be adapted to create a fully accessible form and for UK compliance purposes they need not bother. However, this client would like to offer the forms in as accessible way as possible. Hence the table thoughts...

In addition to this, the client would be more likely to retrofit sites if the workaround didn't involve huge amounts of redevelopment.

I find myself in a Catch-22 situation here as I agree that the end user is king, but if accessibility is to be adopted by companies those of us charged with helping them do that have to work to other guidelines that may impact on the workaround. Whether you agree with this or not, which is better:

1. A site that is not accessible because the accessibility consultant would not compromise in any way with brand guidelines, or

2. A site that has accessibility considerations but has to concede that in some areas (in this case it is ONLY the forms) presentation (which affects 100% of client's current target market) a compromise should be reached.

I personally would take the latter. 

I will also concede that some extra users may be taken up with the site once it is more accessible, but these forms work as a linear version of the table, so surely they are as accessible as the form the WAI suggests? If marked-up correctly this could be a workaround until user agents can ensure that presentation effects work across all browsers supported by the developers...

I guess that I am saying is we would like to keep both parties happy here. So, does a tablular form as presented by Mr Johns make a site inaccessible to the degree that no one can use it, or is it an acceptable workaround until a better one can be found?

Kind regards to all
Simon

-----Original Message-----
From: Joel Ward [mailto:ward_joel@bah.com]
Sent: 19 July 2002 13:24
To: Andrew Johns; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: Re: Using a table to structure a form



> 1) to give up and be forced to have the fieldset - complete with border
and legend and incorporate this into future form designs.  Which might not
please the designers, and indeed, clients.

What about the end-users, the people that should really matter?  Maybe they
would like the consistent way that fieldset shows up.

Just a thought....


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Received on Friday, 19 July 2002 08:39:25 UTC