Re: Data Tables at November 2007 Meeting (Presentation)

I've sent a request for a "Short presentation" slot for the 8th November to 
HTMLWG previously, but not directly to the Chairs:

<http://www.w3.org/html/wg/nov07>

The topic of my presentation is "Native Access" which is a strategy to make 
website more accessible by making use of common markup patterns. This is 
complementative to other strategies, such as ARIA.

The outline for the presentation is:

1. Spend a few *seconds* introducing myself, with a small joke.
2. Show a real-world data table.
3. Show how bad its HTML is.
4. Point out some patterns in the table, such as <td><b> for headers.
5. Suggest <td><b> could be treated as an alias for <th> by UAs;
particularly screen readers.
6. Brief summary of my research into how reliable patterns like that are.
7. Prioritise the tables most people are interested in (sports, shopping, 
weather, others?).
8. James Graham's prototype implementation.
9. Royal Nation Institute of Blind People (RNIB) article about bad tables
being one of the most common accessibility problems they find.
10. UAs which make bad markup more accessible would be a real help. They
already do this to greater and lesser extents (quick examples).
11. Other potential patterns:
    a. <p><strong> means <h3>?
    b. The <td>s in a layout table are effectively <div>s?
    c. An <option> with no value at the start of a <select> is effectively 
its <label>?
    d. Coloured text in <pre> indicates code structures?
    e. (Others.)
12. How should HTML5 and UAAG share their accessibility requirements?
13. Invite more Participants to help with research and testing. Many have 
already contributed.

The rest of my time will be Q&A. I anticipate there will be quite a lot as 
table headers have been a hot topic in HTMLWG.

If there isn't, I can fill some time with:

* A prepared demo of surveying markup patterns on a real website.
* Show some of the more bizarre tables I've come across.
* Show examples of the other potential patterns.
* Facts & figures from my tables research.
* Comment on other research in this space.

--
Ben 'Cerbera' Millard
Collections of Interesting Data Tables
<http://sitesurgeon.co.uk/tables/readme.html>

Received on Friday, 26 October 2007 08:42:21 UTC