RE: Responsive tables and accessibility

Ø  > If the group agrees, that not allowing the user to view 2D tables in a responsive view (when

Ø  > they are otherwise available in other breakpoints) is indeed a failure of WCAG 2 A/AA

Ø

Ø  [Alistair wrote] I don’t think it’s that straightforward, in many cases I wouldn’t agree.

I’m with you on this – thank you for responding -- since only two people responded so far we don’t seem to have a consensus either way on this.


Ø  I’d be interested in people’s thoughts one why that wouldn’t fulfil 1.3.1 Info & Relationships? Or is there another issue?

My question about SC 1.3.1 was that the table is a 2d structure with explicit rows and headers and when you keep that structure but change the visual appearance then the semantic 2d structure no longer matches the 1D structure displayed in the mobile view.    Screen reader users for example would use standard commands to navigate across a table horizontally yet the content is actually displayed vertically.  This was the concern of some people – that is for users that use AT but have sight.   Based on the responses so far this doesn’t seem to be a problem and I’m not so sure it is an issue either.

Jonathan

Jonathan Avila
Chief Accessibility Officer
SSB BART Group
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From: Alastair Campbell [mailto:acampbell@nomensa.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2016 4:26 AM
To: Jonathan Avila; GLWAI Guidelines WG org
Subject: Re: Responsive tables and accessibility

Jonathan wrote:
> If the group agrees, that not allowing the user to view 2D tables in a responsive view (when
> they are otherwise available in other breakpoints) is indeed a failure of WCAG 2 A/AA

I don’t think it’s that straightforward, in many cases I wouldn’t agree.

From the example from Charlie Cathcart (via Steve’s fork):
http://codepen.io/stevef/details/myzLdr


All the information and relationships are available at the smaller breakpoints because it adds the column headers to each block. You can compare rows as each is labelled well.

If that were not the case I would agree that it fails WCAG2, but with that in place (and for this level of complexity) I think it is a better solution across the board than horizontal scrolling. As a user the only negative is slightly more vertical scrolling, but if you are on a small screen and/or zoomed in then there is little difference, you’d have to scroll a lot anyway.

I mocked up a ‘view’ of the different tables imagining you were trying to compare domestic gross from the example with a small screen view:
https://alastairc.ac/tmp/responsive-tables-comparison.png


It shows that if you have a small screen view and try to compare things, you can’t see the film titles, column header and data at the same time. In the smaller breakpoints each item is labeled within a small screen/zoomed view. You have to scroll to compare, but the information is clear.

I’d be interested in people’s thoughts one why that wouldn’t fulfil 1.3.1 Info & Relationships? Or is there another issue?

Cheers,

-Alastair