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Re: does TH scope go along with TH span?

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From: Don Mauck
Date: Nov 24, 2009 9:45AM

Personally and from an Oracle standpoint, we like to see table summary tags that have a brief description of the purpose of the table, if, it's not defined elsewhere such as an accurate HTML heading above the table. Also another thing we advocate is that if a table is complicated in the way its sorted or if the sorting order can be changed, the summary can include the column that the table is sorted by. This has been implemented in se3veral of Oracle's products and I as a AT user find that to be helpful.
In summary: If the table is sumple keep the summary simple. The more complex the table, the more one should consider what kind of accurate and concise information needs to go in the tag. As always it is a judgement call and everyone is going to have a differing view as to what's important.

-----Original Message-----
From: Simius Puer [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 9:34 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] does TH scope go along with TH span?

That's great Geof - thanks for the feedback. Any other AT users with input
on/experience with the summary attribute?

I'm not surprised that you haven't run into the attribute being used very
often - it's not a well known one and it's often misunderstood. The
replication of the text should not really happen if the guidelines are
followed as the summary should be both brief and descriptive of the
structure of the table - not something that should really be included in the
visual text too, but I do see where you are coming from.

The problem you mentioned about abuse of alt tags on images is a commonly
caused by a CMS has been used and either mis-configured or mis-understood by
it's users. Replication of the text is the result.