Re: Summary of Thursday's IRC conversation about @summary

On Mon, 8 Jun 2009, Henri Sivonen wrote:
> 
> > (and again: "The wider web is not an example of good practice.")
> 
> Is there a less wide web where @summary actually serves it's purpose 
> well?

This question was asked before, and a less wide web consisting of pages 
written or maintained by authors with a high level of motivation to 
correctly use summary="" were offered. However, a study of that data 
actually showed that the use of summary="" on those pages was a net loss 
to the accessibility of pages for people who did not use ATs. (Indeed, 
those pages were a big part of the reason why I proposed using <caption> 
instead of summary="", to make the table help text universally accessible 
instead of making it only visible to certain users.)

A detailed analysis of this "less wide web" can be found in this e-mail:

   http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Feb/0601.html

...starting from the paragraph that reads "Thank you! Real data always 
helps us make better decisions".

If anyone can find another "less wide web" that actually shows usage of 
summary="" that is actually optimal, I would be very happy to examine this 
data. As far as I'm aware, no new data has been brought up since that 
February e-mail.

(Notwithstanding that, I will be looking at many of the summary-related 
e-mails that were sent in the past few days as I go through the 
outstanding collected feedback.)

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Monday, 8 June 2009 08:26:25 UTC