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Re: summary or caption

for

From: Ryan E. Benson
Date: Jun 9, 2013 10:20AM

Bevi said:

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?

It all depends on table complexity, and you could throw in context for
argument's sake. At work, tables are usually captioned as "Table 1: Number
of people with AIDS between Year X and Year Y." A summary could be: Number
of AIDS cases broken down by year, US state, and gender, as well as a total
per year. Yeah you can argue that could be assumed, or not too hard to
figure out, but why not make it clear as possible in case?

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.

I have never seen a table with a valid subtitle. What I have seen is the
document labeling scheme, such as a "Table 1" in a H1, and "Number of
people with AIDS between Year X and Year Y" in a paragraph or a span. The
"number of ..." is not a sub title of that, so that implementation is
invalid in my view. Now if we did:
<caption>
<hx>Number of people with AIDS between Year X and Year Y.</hx>
<p>Number of AIDS cases broken down by year, US state, and gender, as well
as a total per year. Gathered by xxx</p>
</caption>

that would be fine in my book, and would agree that the summary is not
needed. In my experience content authors wanting to put that much
information in plain text is not often, even if it assists in universal
design. Then if we change from HTML, to PDF or MS Word, the game plan
changes.

--
Ryan E. Benson


On Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 12:45 PM, Chagnon | PubCom < <EMAIL REMOVED> >wrote:

> 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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