Re: danger of null value for summary attribute [Re: fear of "invisible metadata"]

Robert Burns wrote:
> Is this discussion really over whether @summary should be included in 
> HTML5, or how it should be used in HTML5?
> 
> I've been closely following all of the threads, but I haven't seen 
> anyone arguing that there is an alternative to @summary other than just 
> not providing such assitive technology support. Both of you seem to be 
> supporting the inclusion of @summary too, or am I reading this wrong?

I do support retaining summary in HTML 5.  I believe point 1 in the 
issue page for this topic [1] summarizes what I would say in support of it.

My point was simply that in arguing for inclusion of an existing 
accessibility feature, citing reasons for doing so that run counter to 
current thinking in the accessibility community is not productive 
without justification.

> My sense of what Gregory was saying is that it might be useful to 
> clearly distinguish between tables with no @summary attribute due to 
> (similar for img@alt and img@longdesc):
> 
> 
> 1) table is not a data table but instead a layout table
> 2) table is not complex enough or otherwise doesn't warrant a summary
> and
> 3) author's decision to otherwise deliberately or inadvertently leave 
> off the summary
> 
> The first two could make use of reserved keywords for @summary such as 
> "_layout" and "_simple". In this way other a user could instead assume 
> the @summary just wasn't considered by the author. In other words it 
> will take the user more work to determine anything about the table. 
> Having the reserved keywords could ease the work of the user especially 
> as more and more authors make legitimate use of the keywords.

I have reservations about such a scheme, but my support for retaining 
summary is outside such a methodology in any event.

-- 
Bill Mason
Accessible Internet
w3c@accessibleinter.net
http://accessibleinter.net/

[1] http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/SummaryForTABLE

Received on Monday, 25 June 2007 06:49:36 UTC