Re: Why don't td and th have display/value pairs?

On 7/4/05, David Woolley <david@djwhome.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> > How is a UA supposed to determine if two identical string values (like
> > names) are in fact the same semantic value? Wouldn't it be better if
> > there was a mechanism that allowed table cells to identify their
> > semantic value independant of their display value?

Actually this one is to stand on it's own regardless of any other proposals.

The thought occured to me based on feedback from the other thread, but
screen readers don't read spans. The question becomes how does a
screen reader aid a user in distinguishing between text that's
identical. They don't have the visual benefit of spans. So data
organized as

Name | Day of Week | Food Allowance |
John Doe | Monday | $12.35 | 
| Tuesday | $13.50
| Wednesday | $15.00
John Doe | Monday | $18.60
| Tuesday | $12.25
| Wednesday | $14.65

So what mechanism is used to distinguish between sets? That is the
reason for the question. A question I'd like to get answered.

> I would say a fundamental reason for not abolishing them is that
> HTML is a markup language, i.e. it takes the plain text of a document
> and adds additional structural clues, not a relational data format.

How is paragraph, title or image a clue? My understanding is that it's
marking up the semantic values.
 
Orion Adrian

Received on Tuesday, 5 July 2005 00:19:39 UTC