Re: Tables and Screen reader question

Window-Eyes 4.0, the latest version, cannot tell you which headers are
associated with which cell.  Every HTML element will appear on a separate
line in the MSAA buffer, so sometimes you can figure this out with some
counting, as long as there aren't empty cells, span cells, or other HTML
elements which divide cells into additional pieces.

Home Page Reader 2.5 and 3 can give you table navigation information, if
you put the browser into a table navigation mode.

Lynx 2.8.3 and above will put a table into columns separated by multiple
spaces if it is simple enough, and if you can tell it to display on lines
of perhaps 120 or more characters wide.

I have never tried out ICAB.

I just reinstalled Amaya 4.21 yesterday.  I can reliably read the screens
with the mouse pointer, but haven't yet found a way to get a cursor that
Window-Eyes can recognize.  After I investigate the preferences a bit more,
I'll ask that question on the Amaya list. 

I have sometimes felt that people are confusing screen readers and
self-voicing browsers too much on the WAI list.  But in fact, when you are
dealing with MSIE 5 and its Active Accessibility feature, every screen
reader that supports it is really acting like a self-voicing browser or
user agent, while inside HTML and XML pages.  The difference between a
self-voicing browser and a screen reader is that when you leave the web
browser environment because a plug-in is launched, a self-voicing browser
has to know how to communicate with that plug-in, whereas a screen reader
has more general techniques which much of the time make the plug-in useful
rather than silent.
 
At 07:19 AM 1/5/01 -0500, you wrote:
>Can people please say which screen readers can identify the row and column
>headings for a table cell?
>
>As far as I am aware, this cannot be done using Lynx (which doesn't preserve
>the required information) and cannot be done using Windows 2000 Narrator.
>
>I believe it can be done using emacspeak (at any rate, it is possible to go
>up or down the column to find a header at the top or bottom, and left or
>right to find headers at the sides, which is equivalent to what visual
>scanning enables).
>
>Are there any other possiblities? When I tried with JAWS (I am no expert, and
>I had an old version) I couldn't get the information. I can't get it using
>the built-in speech capability of iCab - that does speak the table cell by
>cell, including the summary. Same for MacLynx.
>
>Mac IE 5.0 and Netscape 4.7 do not provide speech output options.
>
>Cheers
>
>Charles McCN
>
>-- 
>Charles McCathieNevile    mailto:charles@w3.org    phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136
>W3C Web Accessibility Initiative                      http://www.w3.org/WAI
>Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053, Australia
>until 6 January 2001 at:
>W3C INRIA, 2004 Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex,
France
>
>
Braille is the solution to the digital divide.
Lloyd Rasmussen, Senior Staff Engineer
National Library Service f/t Blind and Physically Handicapped
Library of Congress    (202) 707-0535  <lras@loc.gov>
<http://www.loc.gov/nls>
HOME:  <lras@sprynet.com>       <http://lras.home.sprynet.com>

Received on Friday, 5 January 2001 09:15:15 UTC