- From: Laura Carlson <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>
- Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 07:38:08 -0500
- To: www-html@w3.org, public-html@w3.org
Ian Hickson wrote: > I have to thank you (quite sincerely) for the amount of research you > have done here. You are most welcome. I sincerely thank you for your comments. But like Henrik [1] [2], Gregory [3], and Sander [4] [5], I disagree with you on some incentives and qualifying evidence. Perhaps incentives as well as types of qualifying evidence should be defined in the HTML 5 Design Principles. I proposed that the working group discusses the HTML 5 Design Principles as one of the next items it tackles and reaches consensus on them. We all come from different backgrounds with different experiences. Coming to agreement on guiding principles would aid in communication and understanding. It would help avoid needless arguments and churning of issues. Ultimately consensus of guiding principles and definition of terms would benefit working group progress. A few other comments: >> - Dutch Accessibility Law (R-pd.11.5). >> http://webrichtlijnen.overheid.nl/besluit/tekst-besluit-en-toelichting/ >> English Translation via Babel: >> http://www.byteclub.net/wiki/Dutch_Accessibility_Law > > My Dutch isn't very good, but I didn't see any mention of the > headers="" attribute. See section R-pd.11.5. > The e-mail thread quoted above mentions actual [Fidelity Investments] > examples. Would it be possible to get a hold of actual examples > (not samples) that demonstrate its use in the real world? I'll certainly ask. > what would be really helpful is an > explanation of what it is that headers="" does that scope="" does > not. WCAG 2 explains it this way, "This technique is used when data cells are associated with more than one row and/or one column header. This allows screen readers to speak the headers associated with each data cell when the relationships are too complex to be identified using the th element alone or the th element with the scope attribute." [6] Headers/id attributes are used to specify information per cell. In complex tables where not all column headers are relevant to all cells in the column etc the headers will be announced on a per cell basis when the headers/id technique is used. Like Sailesh said in his post [7], "When the labels or headers to be related to a data cell are not exactly above it or to its left, or the table uses rowspan / colspan, one needs to use the header-id method." e.g. tide-tables example [8]. It allows information to be accessed on a per cell basis. Those who use screen readers listen to data, without any visual cues. When this technique is used it enables the user to determine which particular data matches with which particular headers. > I'd love for someone -- maybe me, in due course -- to > do a more in-depth study to check for the accuracy of these > assertions. That would be terrific. > 1. headers="" is more widely implemented than scope="", Yes, that is an important factor for graceful degradation as Maciej states [9]. Due to support issues, Roger Hudson and Russ Weakley's study [10] found that id/headers are the better method to use. Because scope is simpler, shorter and less error-prone than id/headers, it would great if it had better support. It would be great also if all complex tables could be transformed into simple tables. Thank you again for your comments. Best Regards, Laura [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007May/1060.html [2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007May/1038.html [3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007May/1059.html [4] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007May/1056.html [5] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007May/1056.html [6] http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/#H43 [7] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/2007May/0516.html [8] http://broads-authority.gov.uk/boating/navigating/tide-tables.html [9] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007May/1037.html [10] http://www.usability.com.au/resources/tables.cfm ___________________________________________ Laura L. Carlson Information Technology Systems and Services University of Minnesota Duluth Duluth, MN U.S.A. 55812-3009 http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdesign/
Received on Monday, 21 May 2007 12:38:15 UTC