- From: Leif Halvard Silli <xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no>
- Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 04:39:10 +0100
- To: Cynthia Shelly <cyns@microsoft.com>
- CC: "public-html-a11y@w3.org" <public-html-a11y@w3.org>
Cynthia Shelly On 09-11-12 00.57: > This is an attempt to make more information available to > assistive tech from the markup, so that less is required in > summary. I would particularly like feedback on the approach, > and on ways that this goal can be achieved. > > It reduces the scope of what summary is to be used for, by > including > > 1) An orientation attribute on the table element. This > can be used to AT to describe the reading direction of the > table. I was not aware of the @orientation attribute proposal. It seems like a good idea. I think this could increase accessibility. However, I wonder: Is reading directionality recommended to be inside @summary as it is today? I can't recall having seen it. Thus I wonder if this really helps in requiring less from the summary. However, it does help in describing/focusing @summary better. Comments (1) How about saying horizontal(ly) instead of "rows" and vertical(ly) instead of "columns", to avoid overloading rows/columns. We already have scope="row", scope="col", rowspan, colspan, rules=rows and rules=cols. Row and column is unclear also for other reason - e.g. because even if you say "row", then from another angel it can be interpreted as "column" ... (If we read row-by-row then we read in column direction - in my book.) Orientation is also easy to mix with dir/direction. I would suggest @mainorder (or possibly @mainorientation). Adding "main" is good because there are always two orientations, it is just that one of them is the main or "unit constituting" order. <table mainorder="vertical"> (2) Another thing: the spec proposal says that rows is the default value [see quote below]. Probably for a good reason: this is most common. However, the only example in the draft so far orientation="rows". I suggest adding an example for orientation="columns" as well. Especially, as I said above, since many will not immediately gather what orientation="columns" means. (But even if you change to e.g. mainorder="horizontal", there should still be examples of both ...) > The orientation attribute has cna have the values rows and > columns, which indicate whether the table should be read in > rows (horizontally), in colums (rows). rows is the default > value. -- leif halvard silli
Received on Thursday, 12 November 2009 03:39:50 UTC