Re: [Spam] Re: More on <CAPTION> element etc

On 6/21/07 9:25 AM, "Joshue O Connor" <joshue.oconnor@cfit.ie> wrote:

> 
> James Graham wrote:
>> non-visual UAs won't read out the caption before the table body, regardless
>> of source order?
> 
> They will if the CAPTION is at the beginning before the table content.
> It is however often after the table, as that has traditionally been
> where its placed for visual users but it can (should) be in the source
> code before the table content and then styled to be presented at the
> bottom if desired.
> 

Or we can just wrap the <table> and <caption> in a <figure> tag and the User
Agents be updated to know to always say the <caption> value before whatever
else is in the figure.

Think about most books that use data tables, like textbooks, they are often
referred to in the body of text like "In _figure one_ you can see where the
turtle's body weight...."

(would love a FF extension that extracts all <figures> on a page and prints
them. Then prints all the text in the <article> minus the <figures>)

>> I would expect <caption> to be the _first_ thing they would look at for a
>> description of the table, irrespective of where it appears.

Just to double check, I grabbed a book full of tables and figures and
captions (Inside Adobe Photoshop 5 - Limited Edition) and it would seem that
over the years my eyes have been trained to automatically JUMP to the bottom
of Figures in books to read the captions first before actually looking at
the image/table/graph. Also of note is that all the Captions in all the
books on this particular shelf start of with "FIGURE 8. The pen tool...."
Would be nice if the user agents could automate the numbering of figures or
if it could be accomplished in CSS.

For those of you who don't already do this, you should always look at a well
designed Book whenever you've got some HTML or CSS thoughts bouncing around
in your head that you can't make up your mind about.

I'm sure a good Book had something to do with the choice of keeping <hr />
:)

> 
> Absolutely. On another point, the user should not have to look for the
> CAPTION, or @summary or whatever the @newthing could be. This is for a
> very simple reason, many screen reader users are not advanced users of
> the technology, and asking them to navigate even the most basic tables
> is often a cause of discomfort as many just do not know how to
> interrogate data tables. Its also not enough to use "Well thats a user
> agent issue" as a get out clause, even if it is.
> 
> What I am trying to say is every effort should be made to make this
> process (understanding the table) as easy as possible. This can already
> be done by using @summary which the UA automatically picks up without
> the user having to do anything.
> 
> Josh
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

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Received on Thursday, 21 June 2007 22:27:48 UTC