- From: Laura Carlson <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>
- Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2008 09:29:36 -0500
- To: "David Poehlman" <david.poehlman@handsontechnologeyes.com>
- Cc: "Dan Connolly" <connolly@w3.org>, "Ian Hickson" <ian@hixie.ch>, "Steven Faulkner" <faulkner.steve@gmail.com>, public-html@w3.org, "W3C WAI-XTECH" <wai-xtech@w3.org>, wai-liaison@w3.org
David wrote: > This is difficult to answer but there are AT vender representation on all > the wai working groups. They have been working with the WAI for years so > much of the input you get from WAI representation is partly at least due to > their input. The AT venders also express their interest in what they > support. Yes, over a year ago on June 2007, Jim Allan, Chair UAWG wrote, regarding the headers attribute debate: > User Agent Working Group comments: > > The 'headers' attribute is supported by the major screen readers used > in the world (JAWS, WindowEyes, ??HAL/SuperNova-still waiting for a > reply). WindowEyes uses the headers and id attribute combination. > WindowEyes does *not* use the scope attribute. JAWS has support for > headers/id, row and column span, and the 'axis' attribute. > > Assistive technologies, browser extensions, and tools that use DOM > access also support the headers attribute and expose that information > through their accessibility APIs and to their end users with > disabilities and to developers. Examples of this include Firefox > extensions like FireVox and the University of Illinois Firefox > accessibility extension, and developer tools like Parasoft's WebKing > and IBM's RAVEN tool > (http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/raven). > > In addition, platform accessibility APIs such as IAccessible2 on > Windows, ATK/AT-SPI on Linux, and the Java accessibility API all have > functions for getting the row and column headers. The headers > attribute, scope attribute, and TH all provided explicit, engineered > ways for browsers to get row and column headers and expose that > information to assistive technologies through the accessibility APIs. > Without these, the browsers and assistive technologies are forced to > resort to heuristics such as font styling and location (topmost and > leftmost cells), which is insufficient for complex tables with > spanned and multiple row/column headers. Source: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/wai-xtech/2007Jun/0021.html Support for scope and headers attributes in assistive technologies: June 2007 By Working Group members: http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/TableAccessibility headers/id Testing (Bug 5822): Summer 2008 > The headers/id mechanism provides needed functionality. It allows > assistive technology to speak the headers associated with each data > cell when the relationships are too complex to be identified using > the th element alone or the th element with the scope attribute. > > Headers/id allowed the assistive technology combinations tested to > successfully announce relationships 5 out of 6 times. > > Scope failed 6 out of 6 times. The failure of support for scope means > that scope is currently not an effective option. > > Although it is widely known that scope isn't well supported by > assistive technology [1 2 3 4 5], its use is strongly recommend, > because it's easy to author, works with simpler data tables, and > support is likely to improve. Source: http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/TableHeadersTestingBug5822#head-4dd98a1e6b2646ef8c2be83dd7b6c93622e25f4b Best Regards, Laura -- Laura L. Carlson
Received on Tuesday, 26 August 2008 14:30:13 UTC