- From: Stephen Stewart <carisenda@gmail.com>
- Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2009 16:34:08 +0100
- To: Jim Jewett <jimjjewett@gmail.com>
- Cc: HTML WG Public List <public-html@w3.org>
On 8 Jul 2009, at 19:01, Jim Jewett wrote: > [...] > > So let me give some examples, and ask what would be acceptable. > Starting with the same sample table at > http://juicystudio.com/wcag/tables/complexdatatable.html, would any of > the following be acceptable summaries? I ask because I think the > browser could generate these automatically, so if one of these is > acceptable, it could serve as the replacement for @summary. > > "Displays Child Investment, Type, Status, Allocation, TCO, ROI, NPV, > Property, and Running Cost" > > "Displays Child Investment, Type, Status, Allocation, TCO, ROI, NPV, > Property, and Running Cost (broken down by 12/12/2005, 12/19/2005, and > 12/26/2005)" > > "7 columns with merged rows, a property column, and running cost for > each of 12/12/2005, 12/19/2005, and 12/26/2005" > > "Displays merged rows of Child Investment, Type, Status, Allocation, > TCO, ROI, and NPV. Each row is split by Property to show the Running > Cost for each of 12/12/2005, 12/19/2005, and 12/26/2005." > > > I will freely grant that it should be possible to do even better by > hand. But I believe the browser could generate any of these four by > hand -- so if any of these are "good enough", then such an algorithm > should be specified -- and the question is whether to use it in all > cases, or only when there is no (supposedly) handbuilt summary. (The > algorithm isn't trivial, so it isn't worth specifying in detail unless > it will be helpful.) > This email is effectively a +1. I like the idea of HTML5 saying that @summary should be generated where possible and where no @summary content exists. If a UA could not generate an @summary from a table I'd authored, for whatever reason, I'd be encouraged to try and fix the table so a summary could be generated, which may have the knock on effect of better table authoring in my case (perhaps something like validator.nu could say "this table will not generate a summary", or something like that, once I'd tested my HTML against it). At any rate it seems to me that auto-generated summary's would be a huge win for accessibility in this area. > -jJ > -- Stephen Stewart
Received on Thursday, 9 July 2009 15:34:51 UTC