Re: summary="" in HTML5 ISSUE-32

On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 9:23 AM, David Poehlman <poehlman1@comcast.net> wrote:
> What actually mystifies me and I've been following every nuounce of the
> conversation over a long span on several lists is that there has not been
> shown to be anything satisfactorily demonstrated to replace what can be and
> has been used as such an accessibility enhancing attribute as @summary.

Two suggestions I've seen so far are:

* Use a <p> above the table describing the contents of the table.
* Change the definition of <caption> to not just be the title of the
table to also be allowed to contain a summary.

Both these have the advantage if adding accessibility to all users
rather than just ones that use AT clients.

Another suggestion I've thought about is using the table@title
attribute. Title attributes are already often used to add descriptive
information out-of-flow. And title attributes are generally available
in visual UAs in the form of tooltips.

/ Jonas