- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@sidar.org>
- Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2003 11:46:28 +1100
- To: jim@jimthatcher.com
- Cc: "'Matt May'" <mcmay@w3.org>, "'Jesper Tverskov'" <jesper.tverskov@mail.tele.dk>, w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
On Tuesday, Jan 14, 2003, at 11:29 Australia/Melbourne, Jim Thatcher wrote: > By far the most important thing for this discussion is that nesting of > layout tables has NO effect, per se, on accessibility. One has to check > that the content linearizes correctly whether nested or not, but I > would > bet nesting rarely causes a problem. There are a couple of buggy browsers that don't handle deeply nested tables, but in general tables can be linearised even if nested. There are also systems that allow users to navigate tables properly, rather than losing the structure of them. So your tables need to be constructed to make sense - this is more important with data tables that have real structure than with layout tables where shuffling the pieces won't have much overall impact on understanding the site. The effect is one of complicating the navigation, by requiring the user to hold a mental model that includes several layers of nesting as they navigate from item to item. This is worse if they have to change mental models for each page. Except in extreme cases it is only moderately annoying or imperceptible for most users. Chaals -- Charles McCathieNevile charles@sidar.org Fundación SIDAR http://www.sidar.org
Received on Monday, 13 January 2003 19:48:11 UTC