Re: Updated proposals for 678, 680, and 1116

At 16:55 15/08/2006, Andi Snow-Weaver wrote:


>I have updated the proposals for 678 [1], 680 [2], and 1116 [3] based on
>our discussion yesterday. Please review these as soon as possible as they
>are going on the survey tomorrow unless issues are raised that we can't
>resolve on the list.
>
>[2]
>http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/issue-tracking/viewdata_individual.php?id=680

I searched the German WAI-DE mailing list but didn't find anything of the 
subject.
On the WAI IG mailing list, however, I found a few relevant threads:
* thread starting at 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2003AprJun/1001.html:
- "If tables are (mis)used for layout, informing the user of them just 
makes things worse. It's pointless, ridiculous and irritating."
- "It does, to me, seem from both the WCAG and the HTML specification that 
the summary attribute should describe the table's purpose AND structure - 
and a table used for layout has preciously little of the latter."
* very long thread starting at 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2004JulSep/0464.html:
- proposal to use the null summary attribute to identify layout tables;
- "The vast majority of tables on the web  still are layout tables. It will 
take years to add this attribute [summary=""] to existing web pages. As it 
does not have a clear function, it will be hard to convince content 
providers to do so."
- argument against summary="": "Best practice should always be to use an 
attribute when needed, and to leave it out when not needed."
- "in our tool, we allow for both empty attributes like summary and alt, as 
well as certain key phrases, like summary="layout", summary="layout table", 
etc..  these values being filled, however, does not help the screenreader 
user."
- I have checked the complete thread, but the majority doesn't seem to be 
in favour of descriptions of layout tables ('summary="layout"' doesn't 
count as a description).
* another long thread starting at 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2005JulSep/0173.html, which 
I haven't reread.


>[3]
>http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/issue-tracking/viewdata_individual.php?id=1116

OK.

Regards,
Christophe



>Andi

-- 
Christophe Strobbe
K.U.Leuven - Departement of Electrical Engineering - Research Group on 
Document Architectures
Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 - 3001 Leuven-Heverlee - BELGIUM
tel: +32 16 32 85 51
http://www.docarch.be/

Received on Tuesday, 15 August 2006 16:56:05 UTC