FW: Should validity be P1 or P2? (was RE: summary of resolutions from last 2 days)

"Good design is accessible design." 
John Slatin, Ph.D.
Director, Accessibility Institute
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.utexas.edu/research/accessibility/


 



-----Original Message-----
From: John M Slatin 
Sent: Monday, June 20, 2005 2:06 pm
To: 'Ineke van der Maat'; w3-wai-lg@w3.org
Subject: RE: Should validity be P1 or P2? (was RE: summary of
resolutions from last 2 days)


Inneke points out an error I should have caught in the table example I
sent earlier today:

<blockquote>
Did not you see  that the th-tag is not closed at all, so it can never
be 
valid or well-formed? i copied the code to a page i am working on and
the 
validator also told me that the </th>-tag is  omitted.


Besides; it misses a caption tag, headers attribute and
summary-attribute 
</blockquote>

You're right, I should have caught the error. Thanks for pointing it
out. I think it was caused by sloppy copy-and-paste.

I'm attaching an HTML file that closes the unclosed <th> element; the
<table> element now includes a summary attribute and a <caption>
element.  There is no headers attribute on the <th> element because it's
not required-- this is a simple table with just one level of headers.

I submitted this file to validator.w3.org, and the validator returned
the following message:

<blockquote>
This Page Is Valid
HTML 4.01
Transitional!
</blockquote>

Nevertheless, JAWS 6.10 still reports that  "There are no tables on this
page." It does this when I press the letter "t," which serves as a
hotkey to jump from table to table.

When I arrow down the page from the top, JAWS speaks the caption text.
It does not read the summary attribute (as it does for tables that it
recognizes). It reads the contents of the cells in the table. But when I
use the table-navigation keys (alt+ctrl+leftArrow or rightArrow) JAWS
says, "Not in a table."

John

"Good design is accessible design." 
John Slatin, Ph.D.
Director, Accessibility Institute
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.utexas.edu/research/accessibility/


 



-----Original Message-----
From: Ineke van der Maat [mailto:inekemaa@xs4all.nl] 
Sent: Monday, June 20, 2005 1:39 pm
To: John M Slatin; w3-wai-lg@w3.org
Subject: Re: Should validity be P1 or P2? (was RE: summary of
resolutions from last 2 days)


Hello John,

You wrote:

>Here is a very small example in which valid code doesn't guarantee
>accessibility. The following table validates for HTML 4.01 
>transitional. JAWS 5.0 and 6.10 do not recognize it as a table. Home 
>Page Reader 3.04 handles it properly.

<code>
<table>
    <thead>
        <tr>
            <th colspan="4" scope="col">Building Accessible Web Sites
        </tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
        <tr>
            <td>HTML</td>
            <td>PDF</td>
            <td>MS Word</td>
            <td>DAISY</td>
        </tr>
    </tbody>
</table>
</code>


Did not you see  that the th-tag is not closed at all, so it can never
be 
valid or well-formed? i copied the code to a page i am working on and
the 
validator also told me that the </th>-tag is  omitted.


Besides; it misses a caption tag, headers attribute and
summary-attribute 
for making the table-code also better  understandable for non-visual
UAs.

Greetings
Ineke van der Maat