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Re: summary or caption
From: Chagnon | PubCom
Date: Jun 7, 2013 10:45AM
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Devi's advocate chiming in.
"a JAWS, NVDA or any other user of a screen reader will benefit from a good
table summary."
1. Why should ONLY screen reader users benefit from a good table summary?
Shouldn't all users have access to the same information?
Remember, "summary" is an attribute on the <TABLE> tag, and it is not
visible to sighted users. If you put information in it that is not available
elsewhere, you could end up with a reverse-discrimination lawsuit.
2. The <CAPTION> tag is visible to everyone, AT-users and sighted users. If
you have a caption, why do you need a summary, too?
3. As an editor for many decades (as well as a programmer), I'd have to
split semantic hairs to describe the difference between a table caption and
a table summary, as they are defined in HTML/WCAG. Is this an example of
WCAG tag bloat - that is, too many tags, rules, guidelines,
whatever-you-want-to-call-them with a lot of overlap in functionality? Does
the W3C and WAI need more editors to help them select better names/labels
for these elements?
4. As an editor, I believe that a good table should have a title, subtitle,
caption, and column headers that adequately provide this information to
everyone whether they are using AT or not. This information is built into
the body of the table for everyone to see, regardless of the technology they
are using.
So, if you're thinking that some tag will help people use the information in
a table, stop. Instead, go hire a competent editor to write/edit a better
table. Creating another tag, attribute, or other markup doesn't completely
fix the problem because often the problem is a poorly written and edited
table.
-Bevi Chagnon
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