Re: summary="" in HTML5 ISSUE-32

On Feb 26, 2009, at 12:51 PM, Dan Connolly wrote:

> On Thu, 2009-02-26 at 11:16 -0800, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
>> On Feb 26, 2009, at 6:08 AM, Dan Connolly wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> That's the 2nd time in this thread that I've seen someone take issue
>>> with the problem statement/goals. (the other
>>> was Faulkner 24 Feb 2009 10:25:49 +0000).
>>>
>>> Ian, I have seen your responses regarding some of the proposed
>>> solutions, but not these points about the problem statement.
>>>
>>> What do you think of the more constrained problem statement,
>>> addressing "rendering to non-visual media such as speech
>>> and Braille"?
>>
>> Limiting the problem scope to non-visual media would, at first  
>> glance,
>> violate our Media Independence and Accessibility design principles:
>>
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/html-design-principles/#media-independence
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/html-design-principles/#accessibility
>
> The conflict with the media independence principle is clear enough;
> I don't quite see a conflict with the accessibility principle
> as stated.

The principle says: "Design features to be accessible to users with  
disabilities. Access by everyone regardless of ability is essential."  
There is general agreement that users with cognitive difficulties, for  
example, would often benefit from table summaries. Thus, explicitly  
limiting a problem scope to help only users with some disabilities but  
not others would be against my understanding of the Accessibility  
principle. I agree this is less clear-cut than the conflict with Media  
Independence.

Regards,
Maciej