Re: WYSIWYG editors non-support of complex tables

On Thu, Dec 8, 2011 at 1:26 PM, <noreply@w3.org> wrote:

>
> Name: Charles Belov
> Email: charles.belov@sfmta.com
> Affiliation: San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency
> Document: TD
> Item Number: H63
> Part of Item: User Agent Notes
> Comment Type: technical
> Summary of Issue: WYSIWYG editors non-support of complex tables
> Comment (Including rationale for any proposed change):
> If HTML editors do not support the scope and header attribute without hand
> coding, then there needs to be advice to convert complex tables to simple
> tables.
>
> For example, it is my understanding that Adobe Contribute CS4 does not
> support these attributes, and Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 does not support a
> convenient UI for applying them, necessitating hard coding.
>
> Proposed Change:
> Add paragraph:
>
> If the HTML editor software being used does not support the scope
> attribute, or does not support these without hard coding and the author
> wishes to avoid hard coding, it will be neccessary to convert the complex
> table to one or more simple tables.  See technique H51: Using table markup
> to present tabular information
>
> ================================
Response from the Working Group
================================
User Agent Notes describe issues in support by assistive technology and
browsers. WCAG does not address levels of support by authoring tools. So
adding this advice to the User Agent Notes is not appropriate.

We will add another note to the technique description, suggesting that
authors consider converting complex tables to one or more simple tables.

Note: Some users may find it easier to work with several simple tables than
one more complex table. Authors may wish to consider whether they can
convert complex tables to one or more simple tables.

Loretta Guarino Reid, WCAG WG Co-Chair
Gregg Vanderheiden, WCAG WG Co-Chair
Michael Cooper, WCAG WG Staff Contact


On behalf of the WCAG Working Group