Re: How Much Of A Problem Are Tables Used for Design?

I'm not arguing against the points you or Gregory have made.  However, it
has been my personal experience that the majority of sites that use tables
for layout are readable with a variety of browsing strategies used by
people who are blind.  I guess if I have to do a bit of moving up or down a
line to figure context when I'm unfamiliar with a page I don't find that
such a horrific thing.  When combined with the reality that the vast vast
majority of web sites use table commands for layout I think trying to
change such behavior will be a losing battle from the start.

I don't know of any method that is going to quickly tell me the context of
a single word searched for on a web site.  I mean I could bring up any
page, type in a search term and find it.  I'd still have to do a bit of
exploring to discover the context of that word.

At 08:47 AM 11/17/99 -0800, T. V. Raman wrote:
>as an example of what I mean look at the following lines
>extracted from your message:
>
>Children's
>Audiobooks,
>Music,
>Science & Space...
>
>
>Now, when you land on "audio books"
>--how do you know that that's children's audio books 
>without feeling around the screen?
>
>For instance say you search for occurrences of "audio books" 
>on the page--
>you hit the string "audio books"
>multiple times,
>and each time you have to look both at the line above
>(or possibly below)
>to put it in context.
>
>This in itself does not sound too bad--
>but realize that the fact that the "children's" landed up in
>the line immediately above "audio books"
>was pure accident --and something that could change if the
>Yahoo site 
>decided to change from being row-oriented to column-oriented
>in their table design.
>Equally,  the proximity of "children's" to "audio books" 
>is a function of whether the screenreader  decides to
>decolumnize using row major or column major order.
>
>
>
>
>>>>>> "Kelly" == Kelly Ford <kford@teleport.com> writes:
>
>    Kelly> Hi,
>    >> Also, most layout-oriented sites only manage to turn into a
>    >> different form of gibberish when decolumnized in this way 
>>the issue gets especially bad with nested tables where the
>>decolumnizing gets even more ad-hock.
>>
>>As an example, try 
>>the various yahoo sites e.g. broadcast, loans etc.
>>
>
>    Kelly> Could you provide some clarification on what you
>    Kelly> mean here.  Below is part of the text as
>    Kelly> decolumnized by both JFW with Internet Explorer
>    Kelly> and Lynx.  Of course missing here are the numbers
>    Kelly> Lynx could insert or the word Link before each
>    Kelly> line below but basically each line below is a
>    Kelly> link.
>
>    Kelly> My impression of this page, like much of the main
>    Kelly> Yahoo Index, is that you have a basic category
>    Kelly> name and then some subcategories under that
>    Kelly> category.  The pattern is terminated with a link
>    Kelly> that has several periods, which is an indication
>    Kelly> that the next link will be a major category.  To
>    Kelly> me this is very readable and functional.
>
>    Kelly> The other sections of the page are links to live
>    Kelly> events today and are equally readable to me.
>
>    Kelly> I'm not saying readable to Kelly equals
>    Kelly> accessible.  But of the hundreds of people who
>    Kelly> are Blind I've worked with on internet access,
>    Kelly> Yahoo has been a favorite site because people
>    Kelly> find it functional.  ***Begin cut from
>    Kelly> http://broadcast.yahoo.com*** AudioBooks Author
>    Kelly> Interviews, New Releases...  CD Jukebox Listening
>    Kelly> Parties...  Video Educational, Movies, TV
>    Kelly> Series...  Radio Local, Shows...  TV Local,
>    Kelly> Networks, News, Weather...  Broadband Movies,
>    Kelly> Music, TV Shows...
>
>    Kelly> Business Events, Industries, Investing,
>    Kelly> Leadership...  Careers & Employment jobs.com,
>    Kelly> Resumes...  Children's Audiobooks, Music, Science
>    Kelly> & Space...
>
>-- 
>Best Regards,
>--raman
>------------------------------------------------------------
>
>IBM Research: Human Language Technologies
>Phone:        1 (408) 927 2608
>Email:        tvraman@us.ibm.com
>WWW:          http://cs.cornell.edu/home/raman
>PGP:          http://cs.cornell.edu/home/raman/raman.asc 
>Snail:        IBM Almaden Research Center,
>              650 Harry Road
>              San Jose 95120
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 17 November 1999 11:58:27 UTC