- From: Leonard R. Kasday <kasday@acm.org>
- Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2000 13:32:57 -0400
- To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
- Message-Id: <4.3.1.2.20000417130403.00dceda0@pop3.concentric.net>
More on linearized tables... The access board's proposed regulations for section 508 http://www.access-board.gov/RULES/508nprm.htm do not require that tables used for layout make sense when linearized. This is presumably because requirement (5.3) was a priority 2, and the board decided to generally go with priority 1 only. I personally think this should be a priority 1 requirement, since a page can become unusable if this requirement isn't enforced. As we left this discussion last month there was support for upgrading this requirement to priority 1, but as I read the thread there didn't seem to be a final consensus. I think it would be useful to reach consensus on this particular issue soon since the comment deadline is at the end of the month. Even if the WAI per se doesn't take stands on regulations, it would help inform comments that people make outside of WAI, especially if the consensus is to upgrade this to priority 1. Another issue is that the proposed regulations require that "Markup shall be used to associate data cells and header cells for data tables that have two or more logical levels of row or column headers." This is indeed a Priority 1 in the guidelines (checkpoint 5.2). However, for the simple, common case of nested headings along the top and left side of a table, no additional markup is needed since HTML 4 provides an algorithm http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/tables.html#h-11.4.3 which identifies the proper headers. So I'd like to allow an exception for this case, because - in general, we're best off asking only for what is really needed - Someone else is bound to notice the same thing and point out that we're asking for something that's not needed, thereby opening the guidelines to attack--e.g. court. Len -- Leonard R. Kasday, Ph.D. Institute on Disabilities/UAP, and Department of Electrical Engineering Temple University 423 Ritter Annex, Philadelphia, PA 19122 kasday@acm.org http://astro.temple.edu/~kasday (215) 204-2247 (voice) (800) 750-7428 (TTY)
Received on Monday, 17 April 2000 13:41:21 UTC