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Re: How did the summary attribute become part of HTML 4.0?

From: Murray Maloney <murray@muzmo.com>
Date: Fri, 07 Aug 2009 21:43:46 -0500
Message-Id: <5.1.1.6.2.20090807214014.0387d7d0@mail.muzmo.com>
To: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>
Cc: Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi>, Steven Faulkner <faulkner.steve@gmail.com>,HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>
At 05:42 PM 8/7/2009 -0700, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:

>If anyone has direct recollection of the decision or can find other
>directly relevant emails, that would be useful data. Likewise if
>anyone knows about any usability studies that WAI may have done in the
>course of creating WCAG or WCAG2, and whether they address this topic.

I have just posted some of my recollections.


>Some tentative thoughts based on the data presented so far:
>
>1) We should make sure, for the sake of future generations, that
>decisions relating to HTML5 are well-documented in the public record.
>
>2) Perhaps <table title=""> could be suggested as a possible table
>description technique. The issue with being limited to one line has
>been fixed in modern browsers.

See my recent post. @title is already used for table description. It is not 
intended
to serve the purpose that @summary is intended to serve, nor will @summary
be needed for much longer. There is no profit in redesigning @summary,
since it will be supplanted by ARIA in due course.
Received on Saturday, 8 August 2009 01:43:18 UTC

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