- From: Matt May <mcmay@w3.org>
- Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2003 14:35:13 -0800
- To: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@sidar.org>
- Cc: "Jesper Tverskov" <jesper.tverskov@mail.tele.dk>, <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
On Monday, January 13, 2003, at 12:00 PM, Charles McCathieNevile wrote: > I don't think nested tables are inherently an accessibility problem > any more, if they linearise correctly. At some level it becomes > difficult to navigate the complex structure in a system that actually > provides full access to tables (linearisation is a nasty hack that > loses important information encoded in data tables), but this is > generally not that relevant for layout tables. > > It isn't elegant programming/design style, and I wouldn't like to pay > people for introducing the complexity in my site, but it might not be > any problem for accessibility at all. I agree that for the most part, nested tables alone are not de facto inaccessible. Really, a very large chunk of the Web nests tables as a matter of course, since many sites are designed around tables for common designs such as navigational sidebars, and so on. But at the same time, elegant programming and design is key to making existing sites more accessible; it would follow that poorly-designed sites which use nested tables are usually substantially harder to modify or redesign, and that includes making changes to enhance accessibility. It is, as you suggest, a greater problem of design, but sooner or later it does trickle down and become an accessibility problem. Nested tables throughout a site are a red flag that design teams are stuck in a rut of outmoded markup practices. Most of the layout tables I've seen can be done with CSS, for example. Those facilities have been available to authors for several years now. People who view source regularly see similar signs of obsolete design tactics (use of the <font> element hundreds of times in a document is also still frighteningly common). We've seen these telltale signs of bad design decisions for years now as we in accessibility review sites for conformance, and so it's become common to say one shouldn't do this or that as a matter of practice. The key principle here is that before one endeavors to break the rules, one should know why the rules existed in the first place. Assistive technologies have had to get better at handling complex tables, and do well, but they may not do what you expect of them, and you shouldn't rely on them to do what could simply be done with proper layout. If nested tables linearize properly, that's a happy accident. Properly coded and styled HTML works this way by design. - m
Received on Monday, 13 January 2003 17:34:44 UTC