side by side text

A number of guidelines require workarounds "until user agents" do certain 
things.  For example
'
in http://www.w3.org/WAI/Resources/WAI-UA-Support it says

Checkpoint 10.3
Checkpoint text:
Until user agents (including assistive technologies) render side-by-side 
text correctly, provide a linear text alternative (on the current page or 
some other) for all tables that lay out text in parallel, word-wrapped columns.
Status: IBM's Home Page Reader in combination with Netscape Navigator (4.5, 
Win98) and Henter Joyce's JAWS in combination with Microsoft Internet 
Explorer (4.0 and higher, Win98) are instances of a browser and assistive 
technology combination that can linearize a table. Opera (3.6, Win98) 
allows a user to linearize tables. Lynx (2.81, Unix) renders tables by row. 
Silas' Gateway and other tools being developed by the ER Working Group 
[ER-IG] allow users to linearize tables. However, only Microsoft Internet 
Explorer (4.0 and higher, Win98) with HelpDB and WWW with EmacsSpeak allow 
a user to navigate within and between the cells of a table.


Does this mean that we no longer need at linear text alternative?

Len


--
Leonard R. Kasday, Ph.D.
Institute on Disabilities/UAP and Dept. of Electrical Engineering at Temple 
University
(215) 204-2247 (voice)                 (800) 750-7428 (TTY)
http://astro.temple.edu/~kasday         mailto:kasday@acm.org

Chair, W3C Web Accessibility Initiative Evaluation and Repair Tools Group
http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/

The WAVE web page accessibility evaluation assistant: 
http://www.temple.edu/inst_disabilities/piat/wave/