[Bug 5823] Scope allowable on a td

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=5823





--- Comment #6 from James Graham <jg307@cam.ac.uk>  2008-07-02 10:47:52 ---
(In reply to comment #5) 
> There is need for HTML 5 to have mechanisms to make complex data tables that
> are 1) accessible  2) conform to HTML 5. I think this issue is worthy of more
> consideration than seems to have been given here - seeing that it was open for
> all of 10 minutes. 

The issue had been considered before the bug was opened when the data tables
section was last updated, so the 10 minutes number is deeply misleading.

> 
> > Therefore if you want this bug or bug 5822 reopened, I suggest that you present
> > real-life examples of tables that meet the criteria 1) and 2) above. 
> 
> Coming up with examples that meet the first criteria is easy. The second is
> completely subjective and therefore very hard to quantify. The argument could
> continue ad nauseum about whether the table /could/ be made more simple. Most
> can but thats not the issue really.

>From a purely accessibility point of view it very much is the issue because
simpler presentations of the same data will be easier for more people to
understand — particularly including those who can only interrogate the table
one cell at a time — than a more complex presentation of the data. Therefore,
for authors who care about accessibility the best possible advice is to make
the table as simple and well structured as possible (authors who don't care
about accessibility won't use anything as complex as the mechanisms described
here anyway). 

I am very sympathetic to the idea that mixed header/data cells might be a
necessary evil in some cases but until someone puts some work in to demonstrate
that they are actually needed in some real life, there's no chance that the
spec will be updated to allow for them. I'm sorry I can't offer the time to do
the work but I'm already swamped with more pressing non-HTML5-related things at
the moment. Having said that Ben Millard has probably done most of the hard
graft here already with his "Collection of Interesting Data Tables". Fobbing
off the need to do work with an argument that amounts to "even if I did the
work, it would only cause debate about whether the feature I want is actually
needed so instead we should just declare that it is needed" is pretty unlikely
to be productive.


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Received on Wednesday, 2 July 2008 10:48:26 UTC