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Re: Using Tables

for

From: Joshue O Connor CFIT
Date: Feb 15, 2012 2:00AM

Hi all,

Thanks to Laura and Sailesh for giving me a heads up about this thread.

Here is a list of @summary examples in the wild that are attached to the
latest change proposal for @summary in the HTML5 WG.

You can see them at. [1]

The change proposal itself it at. [2]

As I've said many times, I find @summary to be just a simple, useful
attribute, that was well supported but often just simply neglected. An
accessibility diamond, if you will. It was amazing to me how many here
have had to fight to 'save' it, thought the net result is unfortunately
obsoletion. I also think many in the accessibility community are just
not really bothered with it anymore. This is probably partially due to
burn out, and being at the tail end of the 'a11y war of attrition (2006
- ?)'. There are - in fairness - many other issues that require
attention. FFIW, It was a no brainer - to me - to keep @summary as I had
seen it in use by my blind friends in user tests, and thought it did
what it did very well. But I do feel I failed somewhat in translating
what was obvious to me, to others in the HTML5 WG.

I also disagree with Jared. @summary doesn't have to just rigidly just
give a structural overview of complex tables (no matter what it says in
the spec). It can be used to provide additional supplementary
information to a blind person that can aid comprehension of any table
and its contents. They won't be swamped as they navigate a page with
tables because as soon as they give focus to another HTML element the
can skip the @summary (or indeed just silence JAWS etc).

Anyway, it is academic now so at this stage I'm adopting a Forrest Gump
stance, "that's all I have to say about that".

Cheers

Josh

[1]
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/ReinstateTableSummary/RealWorldExamples

[2] http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/ReinstateTableSummary

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