RE: [DRAFT] Heartbeat poll

Ian Hickson wrote:
> 
> 
> The first request there is:
> 
> | Indicate in the current Working Draft that the ultimate fate of
> @summary
> | is an open issue (as opposed to a conformant but obsolete attribute,
> | which nobody has agreed to yet).  My preference would be to restore
> this
> | attribute to its current HTML 4/XHTML 1 status, but I can live with
> it
> | simply being an unanswered question at this time with *no* status
> | outside of open and in "limbo", as at least that is accurate and
> | truthful.
> 
> Done.

Acknowledged as partially addressed, please see below.

> 
> The second request is:
> 
> | More importantly however, is to remove the author guidance that today
> | explicitly contradicts existing, W3C approved Accessibility Guidance
> as
> | written in WCAG 2.
> 
> I don't know which author guidance that is. Could I request more
> specific
> feedback for this request?


Editor's Draft:

4.9.2 The table element

Content attributes:
    Global attributes
****New****
    Content attribute: 
    summary

"This attribute is suggested in earlier versions of the language as a <a
href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20081211/H73">technique
for providing explanatory text for complex tables</a> for users of screen
readers.

<p class="XXX">It has been suggested that the summary="" attribute should
be made obsolete in favor of other techniques, and the working group may
vote on the matter at some future point.</p>

(thoughts on conformance status - ideally validators would flag this as an
unresolved issue.  User agents already render for backwards compatibility)


******

Remove @ Line 68073: "Authors should not specify the summary attribute on
table elements.  This attribute was suggested in earlier versions of the
language as a technique for providing explanatory text for complex tables
for users of screen readers. One of the techniques  described in the table
section should be used instead."


Justification:

WCAG 2:
  Techniques for WCAG 2.0 - H73: Using the summary attribute of the table
element to give an overview of data tables

"The objective of this technique is to provide a brief overview of how
data has been organized into a table or a brief explanation of how to
navigate the table. The summary attribute of the table element makes this
information available to people who use screen readers; the information is
not displayed visually.

The summary is useful when the table has a complex structure (for example,
when there are several sets of row or column headers, or when there are
multiple groups of columns or rows). The summary may also be helpful for
simple data tables that contain many columns or rows of data."
http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20081211/H73 


JF

Received on Saturday, 1 August 2009 18:34:31 UTC