Re: CSS display property and tables

Thanks again Léonie, I believe your analysis to be true but...

The most important for me is a final evaluation of the the CSS display
property with table values in an accessibility context. Is this a very
nice trick we should promote?

Am I right, that using the display property to transform DIV or e.g.
LIST elements into a table, is exactly the same as using a table of
design and put in the role="presentation" attribute? The same end
result? More or less?

Is using a table of design with role="presentation" the preferred
method when a table of design is considered necessary as an exception
to the rule of only using table for data?

Or do you consider turning DIV or LIST elements into tables using the
display property a very elegant and attractive and less confusing
alternative that we should promote to the world of web designer?

Or should we, as I believe, stick to the role="presentation" method
and completely forget about the other one?

Cheers
Jesper

On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 6:13 PM, Léonie Watson
<lwatson@paciellogroup.com> wrote:
> From: jesper.tverskov@gmail.com [mailto:jesper.tverskov@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Jesper Tverskov
> Sent: 13 May 2015 16:44
>
> After thinking it over one more time, I think I have found the final right argument for not using CSS display property to turn DIV or LIST elements into tables in order to be able to say: "Look, I have done away with the last table of design, and only use table markup for data tables".
>
> By using CSS property "display:table", etc, we turn DIV or LIST markup into table markup, and if there is any logic to this world, it ought to be the equivalent of actually using table markup, and the table semantics will be mapped to the accessibility API.
>
> No, I don't believe this is the case. If you use CSS table markup it remains at the design layer - to the extent that no screen reader treats it as table markup.
>
> Mapping CSS table properties to table semantics in the accessibility APIs would not be a good thing. It would breach the design/structure separation with fairly horrible consequences for AT users because you'd be replicating the problems found with HTML layout tables.
>
> Léonie.
>
> --
> Léonie Watson - Senior accessibility engineer
> @LeonieWatson @PacielloGroup PacielloGroup.com
>
>

Received on Thursday, 14 May 2015 07:18:33 UTC