- From: Ben Caldwell <caldwell@trace.wisc.edu>
- Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2003 09:41:35 -0500
- To: "'Matt May'" <mcmay@w3.org>, "'Chris Ridpath'" <chris.ridpath@utoronto.ca>
- Cc: "'WAI WCAG List'" <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
I would suggest that the presence of the <TH> element is a better indicator of an author's decision about whether a table is a layout table or not. Assuming that we require that (a) all data tables have TH elements and (b) layout tables do not have TH elements, I think that also requiring summary on layout tables is an unnecessary requirement. The existence of TH (or lack thereof) could just as easily be used for triggering user checks and prompting the author to classify the table type. Defining table type based on the TH element also allows us to put forth a clear and simple rule about the use of the summary attribute on layout tables rather than suggest that they may or may not be used in certain ways (null vs. absent) or on certain types of layout tables. Also, if both the use of layout tables and the use of CSS are legitimate strategies for adjusting layout, then it seems to me that these strategies should have comparable mechanisms/requirements for including summary information. Since the CSS approach (which is at least in theory preferable to using tables for layout) does not include a mechanism for summarizing layout, I see no reason to require the presence of the summary attribute on layout tables. -Ben
Received on Friday, 8 August 2003 10:41:52 UTC