- From: David Poehlman <poehlman1@comcast.net>
- Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2009 16:04:43 -0500
- To: Matt Morgan-May <mattmay@adobe.com>
- Cc: Jonas Sicking <jonas@sicking.cc>, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>, Sam Ruby <rubys@intertwingly.net>, Robert J Burns <rob@robburns.com>, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>, "Gregory J. Rosmaita" <oedipus@hicom.net>, Leif Halvard Silli <lhs@malform.no>, James Graham <jgraham@opera.com>, Joshue O Connor <joshue.oconnor@cfit.ie>, Steve Axthelm <steveax@pobox.com>, Steven Faulkner <faulkner.steve@gmail.com>, Simon Pieters <simonp@opera.com>, HTMLWG <public-html@w3.org>, "wai-xtech@w3.org" <wai-xtech@w3.org>, "wai-liaison@w3.org" <wai-liaison@w3.org>, "janina@rednote.net" <janina@rednote.net>, Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>, Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de>, W3C WAI Protocols & Formats <w3c-wai-pf@w3.org>
Hi Matt! I am also hoping there is a distinction between @summary and caption as well but feel a sharp need to have summary displayed for users cognative assistance as well as for vi users who cannot get the entire table in view. On Feb 25, 2009, at 3:58 PM, Matt Morgan-May wrote: On 2/25/09 12:07 PM, "Jonas Sicking" <jonas@sicking.cc> wrote: > On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 12:03 PM, David Poehlman <poehlman1@comcast.net > > > wrote: >> what is the difference between your paragraph and what we already >> have? how >> would it improve on @summary? > > The advantage is that the <p> is displayed to all users. Not just > users of AT clients. From the HTML 4.01 spec [1]: "summary = text [CS] This attribute provides a summary of the table's purpose and structure for user agents rendering to non-visual media such as speech and Braille." This needs to be stated as clearly as possible: @summary is not <caption>. There may be some overlap in the minds of HTML WG members, but my read is that no one on the PF side shares that opinion. (Please speak up if any of you disagree.) @summary serves a specific purpose: to offer a description of the visual and structural makeup of a table _specifically_ for the benefit of non-visual users. Those who can see the table can see the structure that it represents. Making it visible by default would only add redundancy. If you want to make @summary readable to all users, then by all means, do so. If you want to disambiguate @summary and <caption> to clarify that it is for AT users only, I fully support that. But the purpose of @summary is not subsumed by <caption>. - m [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/tables.html#adef-summary -- Jonnie Appleseed with his Hands-On Technolog(eye)s reducing technology's disabilities one byte at a time
Received on Wednesday, 25 February 2009 21:05:21 UTC