RE: [techs] The TH Rule

Sailesh ,I

I believe your report about screen reader behavior is in error. It is The
Slippery Slope I mentioned before. At
http://jimthatcher.com/samples/tablesample2.htm I tried to outline some of
the conditions for the reading I described at the top of the page.

 

> 3. For screen reader behavior of row with td only and row with td and
scope:
> Please see attached htm file. First table uses td for first row  and first
col. Only JAWS reads row and col 

> headers. But WinEyes 4.5 and HPR 3.02 do not read the col or row headings.

 

Remember that if there is ANY table markup (TH, SCOPE, HEADERS/ID) HPR will
only read the marked up headings information. Your corner cell is
<th>&nbsp;</th> so HPR reads NO heading information. For Window-Eyes, you
need to tell it to speak headings with CTRL+SHIFT+H  three times.Then it
speaks the headings when in table reading mode (CTRL+NumPlus).

 

On the idea of display:none for the caption, I believe that will hide from
JAWS and Window-EYES too.

 

Jim

Accessibility, What Not to do: http://jimthatcher.com/whatnot.htm.

Web Accessibility Tutorial: http://jimthatcher.com/webcourse1.htm.


-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On Behalf
Of Sailesh Panchang
Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 2004 3:58 PM
To: WAI WCAG List
Subject: Re: [techs] The TH Rule

 

Sorry I forgot the attachment in the last post!

1. Bruce writes:
>Skilled use of HEADERS and ID should also work, so is >there harm in
declaring that mixed tables are data tables?
Some e-commerce sites and airline sites etc make use of mixed tables that
really confound users. I have seen a table  wherein the first few rows need
to
be navigated as a layout table then the next set of rows make a data table
and use colspan. Then this sequence is repeated over the next set of rows
till
the end. All of this is just one table. One can assign  just one summary for
the entire table - not for different sections. So how does a screen reader
figure out when to use table navigation keys and when not to? And using
table nav keys to go to first cell or last cell , works on the entire table
and
not the  section  which is a data table.
So one needs to discourage the practice of using  mixed tables.
2. Although caption is visible text unlike summary, it really helps to
distinguish    data tables and is good for accessibility. Also enhances
usability.
Any data table without a caption is just bad practice as any book on
Statistics 101 willsay. And if style can be used to change the display
characteristics
of  a th, why not use style to  make the caption  not show up visibly  if
the author so desires? (See table 1 in attached file). One can set
style="display:none"
to hide the caption but JAWS and WinEyes recognize it. But not HPR 3.02
3. For screen reader behavior of row with td only and row with td and scope:
Please see attached htm file. First table uses td for first row  and first
col. Only JAWS reads row and col headers. But WinEyes 4.5 and HPR 3.02 do
not
read the col or row headings. 
 In the second table that uses  scope for first row and first col, JAWS and
HPR reads  the headings correctly but WinEyes does not support  scope and
does
not read any headings.
Thanks,

Sailesh Panchang
Senior Accessibility Engineer 
Deque Systems,11180  Sunrise Valley Drive, 
4th Floor, Reston VA 20191
Tel: 703-225-0380 Extension 105 
E-mail: sailesh.panchang@deque.com
Fax: 703-225-0387
* Look up <http://www.deque.com> *