RE: Table Techniques - Summary

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