Re: PF Response: @Summary

Hi Ian,

> Is the need not served by <caption>?

No. A caption is provided visually. Like it says in the Use Case
section of the "Mechanism to Summarize a Table" Wiki page [1] for the
majority of sighted users a summary is not needed. For instance:

<table summary="Rows contain destinations, traveling dates, and grand
total. Columns contain expense category and total. The first column
contains merged table cells.">
<!-- Remainder of table -->

A sighted person can see how the rows and columns are laid out and
where the cells merge by a quick scan or glance. They typically
wouldn't need an explanation. Providing it visually would be extra
verbiage that most authors/designers would be reluctant to include
visually on a page because of redundancy.

A programmatically-determined summary mechanism serves a very specific
and most critical use for blind and non-visual users. It provides an
affordance equivalent to the visual user scanning a table for spatial
structure, orientation, and relevance. A summary mechanism provides a
reasonable accommodation. It enables a person with a visual disability
to have an equal opportunity.

> HTML5 attempts to solve the problem using the <caption> element.

Caption doesn't solve it. It is not a replacement for @summary.

There are some possible long term solutions like a new <summary>
element with an "open" attribute listed in the Wiki [2] that might
offer growth to better practice. But since HTML5 has feature freeze
and since a new element would not be backward compatible @summary is
needed in HTML5.

Best Regards,
Laura

[1] http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/SummaryForTABLE#head-4fd8f8462033b251ea8328b598d9482140ff3f1f
[2] http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/SummaryForTABLE#head-847d2ebafa6828471a3d2777ad3676944007c35d

Received on Thursday, 4 June 2009 08:22:21 UTC