Re: role="presentation" [SEC=UNOFFICIAL]

 Let me elaborate on my original example, to make it all more clear.

Let us say, I want to markup a multiple-choice test. For each
question, I have the challenge of how to present the 5 answer options.

Each option consists of a “a)”, a radio button, the answer option
text, and because we have very many Chinese users, after the answer
option text, we even have that text repeated in Chinese (the students
are not too good in English), and because it is some advanced science
subject, at the very end of each option we can even have an index
number linking to a footnote with more information to the person
sitting for the test.

Now, my first solution would simply be to use the List element. The
answer options are true list items, and using a list element (ul, li),
makes it easy to present it all nicely with alternating background
colors.

Now, I am entering the scene. A true accessibility and usability freak
of the fundamentalista type.

I want my webpage to be extremely adaptable to any browser, any
platform, low resolution, extremely narrow view port in the browser,
extreme ZOOM higher than 200%, etc.

For those reasons, I find it necessary to drop using LIST elements. I
need a design table in order for all the information items in each
option to align vertically in the middle if line break and word
wrapping takes place.

>From a visual user’s point of view, the above alignment concern (we
want it to look as nice as possible in any situation), is the only
reason to use a table, with each information item of each option in a
cell of their own.

The interesting thing is that for the sake of the argument, we could
add proper headings for each column but we still have a table of
design.  But the design table very much also looks like a data table,
and it has all the characteristica of a data table except that it is
not of the conventional data table type, we are so used to.

Now the big challenge. Should I use role=”presentation” for the above
table of design? Or, is the user of screen readers much better off, if
I pretend that it is a true data table?

If we pretend that it is a data table, I believe it is much easier for
users of screen readers to understand and navigate the answer options.
It could be reported that we have 5 rows that is 5 options. It is much
easier, after a while, to ignore the last column with the index
number, or the Chinese translation column, if this user is very good
in English, et cetera.

So please ..., is it likely that I could help users of screen reader
by pretending that my table of design is actually a true data table?

Cheers
Jesper

Received on Thursday, 14 May 2015 09:20:39 UTC