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

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.