- From: Jason White <jasonw@ariel.ucs.unimelb.EDU.AU>
- Date: Wed, 6 May 1998 10:20:19 +1000 (AEST)
- To: WAI Markup Guidelines <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
In response to Sean's valuable comments, the following may be noted. First, the central reference document, which, so far as I am aware, has not been updated so as to correspond accurately with the latest page authoring guidelines, is supposed to provide details of the rationale underlying each item in the latter document. There are also plans, though I am not sure how advanced they are at this point, to create a web site that will furnish examples of appropriate design practice. I would argue that the requirement not to use tables so as to format text in columns is of paramount importance, since existing screen readers are unable to differentiate columns and will thus read the text (or display it in braille) in the sequence in which it appears on the screen, from top to bottom and left to right. Also, future assistive technologies will attempt to locate the header cell that corresponds to each data cell in the table. If the table is used for layout purposes, this algorithm will not be applied correctly, as there are no headers as such, and the results may well be confusing to the reader.
Received on Tuesday, 5 May 1998 20:20:26 UTC