- From: Al Gilman <Alfred.S.Gilman@ieee.org>
- Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2008 12:48:28 -0400
- To: Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi>
- Cc: Laura Carlson <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>, W3C WAI-XTECH <wai-xtech@w3.org>, HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>, Gez Lemon <gez.lemon@gmail.com>
On 6 Oct 2008, at 3:10 AM, Henri Sivonen wrote: [re-ordered for short answers first] I'd go with something simpler: Cells that the author wants reported when the user queries another cell for its headers should be marked up as <th>. [nit: 'simpler' is debatable] That's a feasible alternative in terms of markup. It should be on the table, too. None of the markup alternatives can be evaluated or chosen among without considering the role of automation in the author's User Experience. > > On Oct 4, 2008, at 20:12, Al Gilman wrote: > >> Because, in terms of ground truth, it's not the same thing. Only >> in the appearances created by the literal reading of the markup >> terms as mnemonic. >> >> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2008Aug/0574.html > > > The distinction described in that email is probably too subtle for > casual authors to get right. Yes, but that's not the nature of the problem. Casual authors are not generally building large and complex tables writing markup in WordPad. Nor should they be. And the format should not be limited in its expressive capabilities to what casual authors can rapidly grok and get right. What is easy should be easy (ergo more assertive inference of relationships from layout) but what is hard should be possible (correct content at the markup-graph level despite casual and clumsy layout of the table). On subtlety: No, the casual author won't cope with subtleties. But the framers of the format spec must wrestle with subtleties so that the author and the consumer experience can both feel simple, without creating mis-communication. Consumers and authors both come ahead of spec-authors in terms of whose version of simplicity is to be valued, and the consumer and author versions are different. The format framers thus face the opportunity to bridge that gap better or worse. Too simple will be worse. Too complex will be worse. Finding a middle-road sweet spot is a challenge, but not wasted effort. The consumers have to be willing to accept help from algorithms in their software to ease the author's burden in populating the fields in the markup. Likewise the authors and their defenders need to admit that authors stand to produce data of superior quality -- in a way that will benefit consumers -- if they are aided by appropriate drafting and coaching from their authoring tools. > Do existing AT implementations make the distinction? How is the > distinction conveyed to the user? Not every distinction is needed in every view. See "on subtlety" above. My impression is as follows. This is rough memory, not direct experience, and it probably is but one example of a variety of approaches. The <th> distinction is used in routine orientation during cell-to-cell navigation in the table. Moving in the same row, the column headers are announced for the new cell. Moving down the column, the new row headers are announced. The full information context as captured including @headers is only announced interactively, when the user uses an 'inspect' or 'hunh?' gesture. So the distinction is conveyed to the user experience in the difference between push and pull verbosity. > I'd go with something simpler: Cells that the author wants reported > when the user queries another cell for its headers should be marked > up as <th>. Is it common that the author wouldn't want these cells > to be styled distinctly in the visual presentation? And if it is > common, is it better to solve the mismatch by overriding > associations or by overriding visual style? 'common' has to be traded off against 'critical' before deciding how much subtlety or complexity is appropriate. Al > -- > Henri Sivonen > hsivonen@iki.fi > http://hsivonen.iki.fi/ > > >
Received on Monday, 6 October 2008 16:49:12 UTC