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Re: Using Tables

for

From: Jared Smith
Date: Feb 15, 2012 8:36AM

On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 8:06 AM, Sailesh Panchang wrote:

> In effect  invisible text rendered by off-screen technique is not
> much different from invisible text rendered by an HTML attribute to
> fix an accessibility barrier.

It is different. For the most part, a form control is inaccessible
without a label whether it's on-screen or off-screen. A complex table
on the other hand, will still be generally inaccessible with or
without the summary. If the actual problem is resolved (the complexity
of the table), the summary would no longer be necessary.

> Why does one not say throw off the off-screen technique out of the window?

Because the off-screen technique actually resolves the inaccessibility
of page elements. In nearly all cases, the summary attribute (when
actually necessary) simply conflates a complex table with a verbose
description of that complexity.

> misuse of, or incorrect / inconsistent
> application  of accessibility technique itself becomes a barrier for
> users of Web content.

Absolutely! Which brings me to the list of examples that Joshue
provided. Of the dozens of examples, I found one (yes, only one)
summary that I thought was actually useful. Nearly all of the
summaries simply provided one or more of the following:
- a repetition of the visible caption or other visual text.
- a repetition of the table headers.
- a description of the number of rows and columns in the table.

All of this information is readily available to screen readers by
simply navigating to or within the table. Many of the summaries
provided irrelevant and verbose information that was not necessary or
that was already provided visually. If these are the best examples we
can come up with, it simply reinforces my thinking that table summary
really never is used correctly and should probably just go away.

Jared