- From: John M Slatin <john_slatin@austin.utexas.edu>
- Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 08:22:44 -0500
- To: "Roberto Scano - IWA/HWG" <rscano@iwa-italy.org>, "Matt May" <mcmay@w3.org>, "Chris Ridpath" <chris.ridpath@utoronto.ca>
- Cc: "WAI WCAG List" <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Roberto makes a good point when he asks "Why use the [summary] attribute" if the resource contains no text describing the purpose or organization of the table? The primary reason is to confirm that the absence of explanatory text is deliberate rather than accidental. It occurs to me that the problem of identifying table types could be solved by providing a type attribute for the table element; legal values could be "layout" or "data." or An attribute called "layout" whose values could be either "yes" or "no," could also work. These would become part of the XHTML spec. John John Slatin, Ph.D. Director, Institute for Technology & Learning University of Texas at Austin FAC 248C 1 University Station G9600 Austin, TX 78712 ph 512-495-4288, f 512-495-4524 email jslatin@mail.utexas.edu web http://www.ital.utexas.edu -----Original Message----- From: Roberto Scano - IWA/HWG [mailto:rscano@iwa-italy.org] Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 3:56 pm To: John M Slatin; Matt May; Chris Ridpath Cc: WAI WCAG List Subject: Re: Table Techniques - Summary ----- Original Message ----- From: "John M Slatin" <john_slatin@austin.utexas.edu> To: "Matt May" <mcmay@w3.org>; "Chris Ridpath" <chris.ridpath@utoronto.ca> Cc: "WAI WCAG List" <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org> Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 9:43 PM Subject: RE: Table Techniques - Summary > > I agree that null summary (summary="") should be allowed for layout > tables. As Matt points out, this indicates a postive intention on the > author's part to force screen reader behavior, just as the null alt > attribute for images does. Use of the <th> element is *another* good > indicator of the author's intent, in this case to create a data table > rather than a layout table. > > By contrast, the absence of a summary attribute, like the absence of > an alt attribute, may simply indicate ignorance or indifference on the > author's part. I could understand and agree with John but the HTML reference [1] referring to "summary" explain that: "This attribute provides a summary of the table's purpose and structure for user agents rendering to non-visual media such as speech and Braille." "summary" is different from the ALT attribute [2] that must be specified for the IMG and AREA elements. So, if there is no text that presents the table's purpose and structure, why use the attribute? Roberto Scano --- [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/tables.html#adef-summary [2] http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/objects.html#adef-alt
Received on Friday, 15 August 2003 09:22:46 UTC