- From: Joshue O Connor <joshue.oconnor@cfit.ie>
- Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2009 10:02:11 +0100
- To: HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>
- Cc: Gez Lemon <gez.lemon@gmail.com>, Steve Faulkner <sfaulkner@paciellogroup.com>, "Gregory J. Rosmaita" <oedipus@hicom.net>, W3C WAI-XTECH <wai-xtech@w3.org>, www-archive <www-archive@w3.org>, Janina Sajka <janina@rednote.net>, Sam Ruby <rubys@intertwingly.net>, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
As you know, I have been involved in the @summary debate for some time. I wish to offer the following as some thoughts to clarify where I now stand on the issue and to also clear up any confusion that I now realise I may have contributed to regarding @summary. Please note these points do not represent the view of PF although we will be discussing it shortly. To start, I thought of @summary pretty much as a long descriptor for tables, and there were aspects of its use in this capacity I saw as very useful - but I realise it may not be wise to /continue/ with this view of @summary - as a long descriptor - if we are to progress the current specification, as it has some severe limitations. In short, examining @summary in the HTML 4 spec would lead one to believe that it is a long descriptor. It is may not be explicitly defined as such but the implication is certainly there. The DTD definition found in HTML 4 is "purpose/structure for speech output" so the idea of @summary as a long descriptor is certainly easy to conflate with this definition. However, and more importantly to /progress/ this issue, I realise now that @summary should be used to only describe the structure of a complex data table alone due to some of the limitations I mention below. 1) There has been talk of exposing @summary in the browser etc or its benefits to other user groups. As it stands this may not be the best avenue to go down due to progress with ARIA due to the tight binding that there is currently between the <table> element and @summary. @summary is therefore only for the <table> element and is an /attribute/ mostly useful for blind/VIP who are screen reader users and cannot visually make associations between data cells in a complex data table. There are looser more generic descriptors that could be used as long descriptors instead. 2) Because it is only an attribute with the limited capability that entails - @summary is not actually suitable as a proper long descriptor due to its inability to provide the semantic backbone that a true rich content description would actually need. To use it as such would probably be a retrograde step. 3) It may just be a one trick pony. It does that trick well, but in this instance we may be best to leave it as it is - disambiguate it from this notion of it as a long descriptor and promote aria-describedby or similar suitable mechanisms. This could also help to produce a more useful true long descriptor which could be used by other groups if substantive research indicates that this is the case. Currently @summary may not be suitable for other user groups. 4) Finally it should be appraised just for what it is - a mechanism for describing the relationships between data cells in complex tables that is useful for blind and VIP and we need to explicitly keep it as such. I would be happy to keep @summary in the HTML 5 spec and just remove the word purpose from "purpose/structure for speech output" and advocate for the better long descriptor. This would support backwards compatibility with older UAs and as the newer long descriptor gained traction that could be implemented by AT vendors etc. I hope this does help to clear up a couple of things and I am sure we can come to a better solution. Cheers Josh [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/tables.html#h-11.1.1
Received on Wednesday, 10 June 2009 09:03:30 UTC