RE: A table navigation technique

While it would be nice to the solve the problem for *all* screen readers,
this wish list item is not a priority 1 item when your top screen reader
companies already provide good access.  Let's keep these guidelines
realistic and useful, please.

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Luebking [mailto:phoenixl@netcom.com]
Sent: Monday, November 16, 1998 3:23 PM
To: Charles (Chuck) Oppermann; Kathy Hewitt; phoenixl@netcom.com;
w3c-wai-ua@w3.org
Subject: RE: A table navigation technique


Hi,
Please forgive my midwest tendency of under-stating.  In general, blind
people cannot use tables unless an accomodation like table serialization
is provided.  Some screen reader technology can make tables accessible,
but that is not true of all screen reader technologies working with most
browsers.  The use of serializing tables makes tables accessible
regardless of the access technology being used, in general.
Therefore, it should be a priority 1 item.

With regards to the issue of "3rd party assistive technology making
money off their implementation", a browser's providing table
serialization does not prohibit these developers from enhancing the
table navigation if they desire.  They are free to develop better
approaches.  However, the browser's option of serialized table rendering
does not force them to also develop table navigation when they would
prefer to do their product differentiation in some other area.

Scott

> The problem that I have is that it should not be a priority 1 item -- in
> that without this feature, a user agent would be inaccessible.  From your
> comment, "I believe many blind people would **prefer**..." and "blind
users
> would not **like** that functionality...", you are in fact making the case
> that this feature should not be priority 1.  Words like prefer and like
are
> used for pri-2 or pri-3 items.
> 
> Lets also keep in mind that table serialization is a special case
feature...
> one that is not desired after by mainstream users and one that 3rd party
> assistive technologies make money off of in their unique implementation --
> table navigation along with a lot of the items on the guidelines are
selling
> features for access technologies... I'd hate to be taking such features
away
> from them.

Received on Monday, 16 November 1998 18:49:29 UTC