Re: function and impacts (was: @scope and @headers reform)

On 25 Sep 2008, at 5:03 AM, Henri Sivonen wrote:

>
> On Sep 25, 2008, at 11:52, Joshue O Connor wrote:
>
>> Henri Sivonen wrote:
>>> On Sep 25, 2008, at 10:58, Joshue O Connor wrote:
>> <snip>
>>>> It's not a desired stance /against/ native enabling semantics at  
>>>> all. It's a distilled realization that this may be needed in  
>>>> order to make more complex tables accessible in a way that will  
>>>> practically work. Again, the semantic ideal vs the real world.  
>>>> Supporting this behavior in the spec until UAs can deal with the  
>>>> improved algorithm (and you make very valid points about the  
>>>> need to improve it) would mean that HTML 5 will support older AT  
>>>> "out of the box". On this issue anyway.
>>> Why is making headers to point to td relevant to supporting  
>>> legacy UAs? (See my previous email for an elaboration.)
>>
>> Allowing headers to reference a td would allow more complex tables  
>> to be made accessible to users of assistive technology. The  
>> suggested method works in current and older AT as support for  
>> header/id combinations is rather good. [1] [2] [3] [4]
>
>
> Would it not work if the cell pointed to were marked up as a th  
> instead of marking it up as a td? If a cell is a header to the  
> point of having the headers attribute point to it, why isn't it a  
> header to the point of being marked up as th?

Because, in terms of ground truth, it's not the same thing.  Only in  
the appearances created by the literal reading of the markup terms as  
mnemonic.

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2008Aug/0574.html

>
> (Guiding authors to mark their header cells as th is the onramp

s/the onramp/a lever

> to get into a situation where the headers attribute can fade away  
> in most cases once automatic association algorithm implementations  
> enter the installed base.)

Good point.  And accessibility authoring techniques and tools do  
encourage appopriate use of <TH>.  We are in flaming agreement, here.

Al

> -- 
> Henri Sivonen
> hsivonen@iki.fi
> http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
>
>
>

Received on Saturday, 4 October 2008 17:12:49 UTC