- From: Robert J Burns <rob@robburns.com>
- Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 20:29:55 -0500
- To: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Cc: Steven Faulkner <faulkner.steve@gmail.com>, HTMLWG <public-html@w3.org>, W3C WAI Protocols & Formats <w3c-wai-pf@w3.org>
Hi Ian, On Feb 26, 2009, at 7:21 AM, Ian Hickson wrote: > On Thu, 26 Feb 2009, Steven Faulkner wrote: >> >> Philip's "study" in his own words: >> >> "Philip notes that his thing was not attempting to be a particularly >> useful or detailed or well-thought-out survey, it was just scraping >> some >> easily-available information" > > Philip may not consider his data "particularly useful", but since his > results show similar proportions to other studies, I believe he is > unnecessarily self-deprecating. I think Philip is not being self-deprecating. Instead he is being honest, trying to properly attenuate the reading of the results to just what the data can show us. You are right though that the other studies show just as little in results relevant to the conversation as what Philip found. In other words (paraphrasing Philip), we can tell there are 'summary' attribute values on pages that are unsuitable for default display in the normal flow of a document. However, the wild inferences that you have drawn from Philip's and google's data are not at all supported (such as the widespread existence of substantially harmful 'summary' attribute values). > If you have more objective data, then by all means, present it. The scientific method does not say that if we can find suitable data than we can draw conclusions from it, but if we cannot then we should simply allow one person in a position of leadership to make wild speculation about what data might possibly exist if we had the resources to acquire it. We have some biased data sets that suggests we can find some anecdotal examples: nothing more. However, even those anecdotal examples do not really support the claims you've been making about the harm done by the 'summary' attribute. Some of those show anecdotal examples of a redundant summary (something that implementations may be able to address). Some include summary='' where appropriate to indicate a layout table. Some include some summaries that could be authored more clearly. Some might even include summaries for simple tables that may not even be necessary. However even this anecdotal evidence has not produced any examples of substantial harm done to AT users (except perhaps the attribute should be provided more often by authors). Take care, Rob
Received on Friday, 27 February 2009 01:30:50 UTC