Re: Table accessibility (was Re: headers attribute)

On Jun 3, 2007, at 6:17 AM, Steven Faulkner wrote:

> >What bothers me about this thread is that so far the cases to test
> >lack the most obvious case: A table where the table headers are
> >marked up as <th> with no scope='' or headers='' anywhere.
>
> if you look at aurélien's test cases [http://www.fairytells.net/ 
> table_test_case/ ] there is a simple table with only th elements
>
> >To me, it seems like a no-brainer that for practical usefulness, a  
> screen reader should walk tables like this in the absence of  
> explicit >association.
>  and indeed certain screen readers such as JAWS and Window Eyes do.
> But in cases where multiple levels of headers on multiple axes  
> occur simple "table walking" will not suffice. The associations  
> need to be explicitly defined.
>
> >(I tried to test this in VoiceOver, but I couldn't find documentation
> >about keyboard commands querying a table cell for its headers.)
>
> Using voiceover as an example of a screen reader is not necessarily  
> a good idea, as most vision impaired users use JAWS or Window Eyes  
> on a PC and voiceover support for HTML is rudimentary compared to  
> JAWS and Window Eyes.

I agree that VoiceOver is less advanced in its HTML support. But it  
is also the only real option on Mac OS X currently, so worth testing  
in addition to the others IMO.

In particular, I don't think it has any support for matching up table  
headers yet.

Regards,
Maciej