RE: grids vs sortable tables

Fred,

 

Is it necessary to have a property on the table to tell the user that a
particular TH inside that table contains an interactive element for sorting
that column?

 

Matt

 

From: Fred Esch [mailto:fesch@us.ibm.com] 
Sent: Monday, February 1, 2016 9:57 AM
To: Steve Faulkner <faulkner.steve@gmail.com>
Cc: Accessible Rich Internet Applications Working Group
<public-aria@w3.org>; W3C WAI Accessible Platform Architectures
<public-apa@w3.org>
Subject: Re: grids vs sortable tables

 

Steve,

There are sortable tables being used in the wild, for example angularJS's
ng-table. How are developers supposed to tell AT users that a table is
sortable and a column can be sorted if the sortable and sorted properties
are removed? 

Sortable tables are important for accessibility as they are often used as an
accessible alternative to charts. Even when you can make a chart accessible,
when you a huge number of data rows - you want a better way for an AT user
to find the max/min values than walking all the data members. For instance,
providing a sortable table will be more usable than having an accessible bar
chart and forcing an AT user to walk 200 bars to find the top five bars.
Personally, if I had to get the top five values from a huge bar chart I
would prefer a sortable table as well. 




Regards, 

Fred Esch 
Watson, IBM, W3C Accessibility




Watson Release Management and Quality 



Steve Faulkner ---01/29/2016 04:58:04 PM---On 29 January 2016 at 20:07, Fred
Esch <fesch@us.ibm.com <mailto:fesch@us.ibm.com> > wrote: > A table element
can have a *'sort

From: Steve Faulkner <faulkner.steve@gmail.com
<mailto:faulkner.steve@gmail.com> >
To: Fred Esch/Arlington/IBM@IBMUS
Cc: Matt King <a11ythinker@gmail.com <mailto:a11ythinker@gmail.com> >,
Accessible Rich Internet Applications Working Group <public-aria@w3.org
<mailto:public-aria@w3.org> >
Date: 01/29/2016 04:58 PM
Subject: Re: grids vs sortable tables

  _____  





On 29 January 2016 at 20:07, Fred Esch < <mailto:fesch@us.ibm.com>
fesch@us.ibm.com> wrote:

A table element can have a 'sortable' attribute which designates you can
sort on columns.



note the table sorting algorithm and associated attribute have been removed
from the whatwg HTML spec due to a lack of implementer interest and suggest
the same fate will befall this feature in W3C HTML, sooner rather than
later.

--

Regards

SteveF
 <http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2015/03/current-standards-work-at-w3c/>
Current Standards Work @W3C

Received on Monday, 1 February 2016 19:49:35 UTC