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Re: Forms in Tables

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From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Jan 17, 2012 8:54PM

What about utilizing ARIA here and "hiding" the table from the user,
since it sounds like the table is merely being used for layout.
What I like about the possibilities of ARIA is that we can allow for
nice visual layout effects without adversely affecting the
accessibility of the underlying data, basically low for different
presentations.
Feel free to correctme, I may be wrong on this, butit seems to be a
sensible solution to use ARIA to hide the dta table here and just
allow the user to see the form fields.
There was an example posted on this, on this list, quite a while back.
Cheers
-B

On 1/18/12, David Ashleydale < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I was wondering if this group is of the general opinion that form fields
> should be kept out of data tables in HTML. Using assistive technology to
> navigate a data table is one thing, and using assistive technology to
> navigate a form is another. Should trying to combine the two be discouraged?
>
> Visual designers like to line everything up and to conserve space on a page
> by using tables, so it's difficult to discourage them from doing so. And
> I'm talking about legitimate data tables here, not simply using the table
> element as a layout device. Picture a data table that users can "act on",
> like maybe a "Notes" input field at the end of each row.
>
> My gut reaction is to tell the design team to keep tables and forms
> separate, but would that be going too far? Would it be too strict (and
> unnecessary) of a requirement to tell them *never* to do so?
>
> Just looking for some opinions on the topic.
>
> Thanks,
> David Ashleydale
>