Re: summary="" in HTML5 ISSUE-32

Hi Matt!


I am also hoping there is a distinction between @summary and caption  
as well but feel a sharp need to have summary displayed for users  
cognative assistance as well as for vi users who cannot get the entire  
table in view.
On Feb 25, 2009, at 3:58 PM, Matt Morgan-May wrote:

On 2/25/09 12:07 PM, "Jonas Sicking" <jonas@sicking.cc> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 12:03 PM, David Poehlman <poehlman1@comcast.net 
> >
> wrote:
>> what is the difference between your paragraph and what we already  
>> have?  how
>> would it improve on @summary?
>
> The advantage is that the <p> is displayed to all users. Not just
> users of AT clients.

 From the HTML 4.01 spec [1]:

"summary = text [CS]
    This attribute provides a summary of the table's purpose and  
structure
for user agents rendering to non-visual media such as speech and  
Braille."

This needs to be stated as clearly as possible: @summary is not  
<caption>.
There may be some overlap in the minds of HTML WG members, but my read  
is
that no one on the PF side shares that opinion. (Please speak up if  
any of
you disagree.) @summary serves a specific purpose: to offer a  
description of
the visual and structural makeup of a table _specifically_ for the  
benefit
of non-visual users. Those who can see the table can see the structure  
that
it represents. Making it visible by default would only add redundancy.

If you want to make @summary readable to all users, then by all means,  
do
so. If you want to disambiguate @summary and <caption> to clarify that  
it is
for AT users only, I fully support that. But the purpose of @summary  
is not
subsumed by <caption>.

-
m

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/tables.html#adef-summary


-- 
Jonnie Appleseed
with his
Hands-On Technolog(eye)s
reducing technology's disabilities
one byte at a time

Received on Wednesday, 25 February 2009 21:05:24 UTC