Re: WCAG-ISSUE-23 (DavidMacD): We should consider a new "Failure to provide role=presentation on a layout table"

Perhaps this is a good time to explore and review what we are trying to do
with failures, and with WCAG in general. It seems with each new crop of
members it is a good time to revisit our goals. It is difficult to
articulate a perfect algorithm of when we create a failure technique. Here
is my understanding from way back of some of the conditions that would
bring us to introduce a failure technique.

1) Is it a common problem that disproportionally affects people with
disabilities?
2) Is it a problem that technology has now solved but that authors are
still not doing?
3) Are AT repair techniques non-uniform, or patchy?
4) Is there momentum, general consensus, and desire among those in the
disability community to see it fixed
5) Is is easy to fix OR is impact on the authoring community such that
industry can live with the requirements

I think if the answer is yes to all of these, then a failure could/should
be considered. I'm interested to other's thoughts. We can achieve nothing
as a group unless we find consensus.

I agree with Ramon, that failures are stronger than techniques and need to
be more rigorous in their application. On the other hand those of us who
have been working with developers for a long time generally understand that
little gets done until a failure is articulated, it's just human nature. So
it's with all these balanced considerations that I suggest we introduce
some sort of a failure of 1.3.1 for missing role="presentation" layout
tables.

Cheers,

David MacDonald



*Can**Adapt* *Solutions Inc.*

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On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 7:51 AM, Hoffman, Allen <allen.hoffman@hq.dhs.gov>
wrote:

>  Some screen readers “can” ignore layout tables when presenting the
> information, but they don’t really ignore them they simply don’t enable
> cell coordinate-type navigation commands explicitly as they do in what they
> feel are data tables.  In reality layout tables would be improved with
> some mechanism that programmatically associates specific information as
> needed by the layout, however, I’m not aware of such a mechanism presently.
>
>
>
> I’m still not a subscriber to a strategy of creating a failure condition
> based on specific assistive technology current development status.  If
> the information is available but not utilized by assistive technologies
> presently it is not the responsibility of the developer to take further
> steps, unless the developer wants to specifically code something for
> particular AT environments.  Adding on nice usability stuff is great, but
> frankly if we can just get ourselves to the accessible point we’ll be
> darned proud of ourselves.
>
>
>
> How would such AT-status conditions be maintained?  Who would validate
> when one product now supports the lack of access and then determines the
> change to the failure condition?  It’s a maintenance nightmare.
>
>
>
> Accessibility challenges would be a more descriptive designation for such
> situations and guidance, and such would be a moving target.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Steve Faulkner [mailto:faulkner.steve@gmail.com]
> *Sent:* Monday, June 02, 2014 4:08 AM
> *To:* Wilco Fiers
> *Cc:* Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group
>
> *Subject:* Re: WCAG-ISSUE-23 (DavidMacD): We should consider a new
> "Failure to provide role=presentation on a layout table"
>
>
>
> Suggest the success criterion would be 1.3.1 Info and Relationships.
>
> I also ask ramon and sailesh to provide data on the claims that layout
> tables are ignored by screen readers. I understand that some SR's use
> heuristics to try to determine whether a table is being used for layout or
> not, but these mechanisms are fallible. Anecdotally in my day to day work I
> encounter usage of layout tables the semantics of which are (incorrectly)
> announced by SR's. It should also be noted that regardless of the AT
> behaviour, the roles/properties of layout tables are always exposed in
> accessibility APIs whenever they are used. role=presentation provides an
> unambiguous indicator (and depending on the browser) actually removes the
> semantics from the accessibility tree.
>
>
>
>
>    --
>
> Regards
>
> SteveF
>
> HTML 5.1 <http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/>
>
>
>
> On 2 June 2014 08:39, Wilco Fiers <w.fiers@accessibility.nl> wrote:
>
> Hi everyone,
> I think Sailesh and Ramón make an excellent point. Under which success
> criterion would you say this is a failure? Perhaps I'm mistaken, but it
> does not seem like any of the success criteria currently require this. It
> would therefore seem that adding this failure technique would broaden the
> scope of a success criterion beyond what it was initially designed for. And
> considering that WCAG 2.0 is normative and the techniques are not, I don't
> think that's something techniques should do.
>
> Regards,
> Wilco
>
> ________________________________________
> Van: Sailesh Panchang [spanchang02@yahoo.com]
> Verzonden: zondag 1 juni 2014 17:03
> Aan: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group;
> rcorominas@technosite.es
> Onderwerp: Re: WCAG-ISSUE-23 (DavidMacD): We should consider a new
> "Failure  to  provide role=presentation on a layout table"
>
>
> I second Ramón : not having role=presentation on layout tables cannot be a
> failure.
> Sure ARIA / HTML5 may permit  one to explicitly mark layout tables with
> the role but it cannot be 'required'.
> In several cases, it may be redundant and create extra work for
> developers. Consider:
> A table with a single column or row or even a table  with 2 rowslike:
> <table><tr><td colspan=2">Some content</td></tr>
> <tr><td>something 1</td><td>Something 2</td></tr>
> </table>
> Consider the content that is up there but will fail WCAG2 because this
> role is not set on the layout tables.
> The role will certainly help AT when used on a 2x2 type layout table that
> is most likely interpreted as a data table.
> Regards,
> Sailesh
>
> --------------------------------------------
> On Sun, 6/1/14, Ramón Corominas <rcorominas@technosite.es> wrote:
>
>  Subject: Re: WCAG-ISSUE-23 (DavidMacD): We should consider a new
> "Failure  to  provide role=presentation on a layout table"
>  To: "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group" <
> w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
>  Date: Sunday, June 1, 2014, 8:05 AM
>
>  Hello all,
>
>  Although I agree that layout
>  tables are evil and should die, I cannot
>  see this as a WCAG failure. Simple layout
>  tables (no <th>, no <caption>,
>  no @summary) are usually ignored by most screen
>  readers, even if they
>  don't have the
>  role="presentation", and behavior does not change
>
>  whenadding it. Therefore, I cannot find a
>  justification to include a
>  failure that
>  would force developers to add a role that has no practical
>
>  effect on accessibility.
>
>  Regards,
>  Ramón.
>
>  Steve
>  noted:
>
>  > Note: HTML5
>  requires role=presentation on layout tables
>  >
>  > " If a table is
>  to be used for layout it MUST be marked with the
>  > attribute role="presentation"
>  for a user agent to properly represent the
>  > table to an assistive technology and to
>  properly convey the intent of
>  > the
>  author to tools that wish to extract tabular data from the
>  document."
>  >
>  >
>
> http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/tabular-data.html#the-table-element
>  > --
>  > On 1 June 2014
>  10:14, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group
>
>  > Issue Tracker <sysbot+tracker@w3.org
>  <mailto:sysbot+tracker@w3.org>>
>  wrote:
>  >
>  >
>     WCAG-ISSUE-23 (DavidMacD): We should consider
>  a new "Failure to
>  >
>     provide role=presentation on a layout
>  table"
>  >
>  >
>     http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/track/issues/23
>  >
>  >
>     Raised by: David MacDonald
>  >     On product:
>  >
>  >     We
>  should consider a new "Failure to provide
>  role=presentation on a
>  >
>     layout table." In the old days there were
>  many wars about whether to
>  >
>     allow layout tables. wai aria has now solved
>  the issue pretty well
>  >
>     and we should consider requiring it now on
>  layout tables.
>  >
>  >
>
>  >
>  >
>
>
>
>
>
>