Table formatting in CSS 2

A few weeks ago, in discussing the accessibility of tables, T.V. Raman
mentioned the importance of being able to generate customised readings
such as: "Population growth in 1996 was 300,000". This would require the
ability to specify a property that would be applied to each row of the
table, containing a mixture of variables and text strings. It could be
similar in form to the CONTENT property which defines the content of
running headers and footers (see section 12.3.5). In the case of tables,
one would wish to include not only variables that refer to cells in the
current row, but also speech properties of the kind defined in the audio
section of the CSS 2 specification, so that audio cues can be associated
with the reading of a cell. Of course, it would also be important to
include variables that refer to cell headers.

Furthermore, there should also be a property to control whether the table
is row or column dominant. In the latter case, the user agent should read
each column in succession.

I have not worked out the design details of these properties, but I think
the general idea is clear.

Received on Saturday, 1 November 1997 19:07:48 UTC