RE: CSS display property and tables

From: jesper.tverskov@gmail.com [mailto:jesper.tverskov@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Jesper Tverskov
Sent: 13 May 2015 16:44

After thinking it over one more time, I think I have found the final right argument for not using CSS display property to turn DIV or LIST elements into tables in order to be able to say: "Look, I have done away with the last table of design, and only use table markup for data tables".

By using CSS property "display:table", etc, we turn DIV or LIST markup into table markup, and if there is any logic to this world, it ought to be the equivalent of actually using table markup, and the table semantics will be mapped to the accessibility API.

No, I don't believe this is the case. If you use CSS table markup it remains at the design layer - to the extent that no screen reader treats it as table markup.

Mapping CSS table properties to table semantics in the accessibility APIs would not be a good thing. It would breach the design/structure separation with fairly horrible consequences for AT users because you'd be replicating the problems found with HTML layout tables.

Léonie.

-- 
Léonie Watson - Senior accessibility engineer
@LeonieWatson @PacielloGroup PacielloGroup.com

Received on Wednesday, 13 May 2015 16:13:53 UTC