Re: retention of summary attribute for TABLE element

>> James wrote:
>> according to [1] @summary is
>> present on about 2.5% of tables, I would expect it to be unhelpful on
>> many of those

> Joshue O Connor wrote:

> That may be true, but I guess that's a qualitative issue. Such as how
> useful a summary of the tables purpose and content, it is. IMO @summary
> is still important to the small percentage of users who need that
> information. Never mind the issue of UA support for any future
> *improvements* that may be conjured up.

Some of the rationale from the headers issue [1] may be applicable to
the summary issue. For instance:

Rationale: Why Headers Should Not be Included (second bullet)
- ...
- "An insufficient amount of use cases exist to justify id/headers."

Rationale: Why Headers Should be Included (second bullet)
- ...
- "No set number of use cases proves a feature should be included or
excluded from the spec. The W3C requires that technologies must be
accessible. By definition, people with disabilities are a minority.
Accessibility features address failure modes that are infrequent, but
critical when they occur."

WCAG 2 also recommends "Using the summary attribute of the table
element to give an overview of data tables" [2].

Best Regards,
Laura

[1] http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/IssueTableHeaders
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/#H73

-- 
Laura L. Carlson
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdesign/

Received on Wednesday, 13 June 2007 17:19:11 UTC