Re: retention of summary attribute for TABLE element

welcome joshue!

i have created a wiki page on the summary attribute topic, to 
which i will add your email (and laura's reply) - there was 
a suggestion to make HTML4.x's summary attribute and XHTML2' 
summary element synonomous - summary as element would be 
preferred, according to this line of reasoning, but summary 
as an attribute would be a backwards-compatible fall-back...

the HTML/SummaryForTABLE page is located at:

http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/SummaryForTABLE

for the record, i am in favor of retaining the summary attribute 
for TABLE,

gregory.

----------------------------------------------------------
ACCOUNTABILITY, n. The mother of caution.
                 -- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
----------------------------------------------------------
         Gregory J. Rosmaita, oedipus@hicom.net
      Camera Obscura: http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/
   Read 'Em & Speak: http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/books/
UBATS-United Advocates for Talking Signs: http://ubats.org
----------------------------------------------------------

---------- Original Message -----------
From: Joshue O Connor <joshue.oconnor@cfit.ie>
To: public-html@w3.org
Sent: Wed, 13 Jun 2007 17:24:55 +0100
Subject: Re: retention of summary attribute for TABLE element

> Hi all,
> 
> I have just joined the list, and I gotta start somewhere, so 
> here goes :-)
> 
> The summary attribute is also something that many screen reader users
> are used to encountering when they come across a table, to 
> change this without any _good_ reason may not be a good idea. It 
> is a feature that provides useful information to the screen 
> reader user and any equivalent that is being suggested to change 
> this, whether to improve on the quality of information that can 
> be revealed to the user agent, or make it easier for authors,
>  must be sound.
> 
> 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
> 
> That may be true, but I guess thats 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.
> 
> Is there any consensus on what @summary would be replaced with 
> if it were to be deprecated?
> 
> Josh
------- End of Original Message -------

Received on Wednesday, 13 June 2007 17:34:30 UTC