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Re: complex layout tables

for

From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Jan 29, 2014 2:42AM

On 29/01/2014 07:20, Olaf Drümmer wrote:
> Hi Karl,
>
> On 29 Jan 2014, at 03:52, Karl Groves < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
>> 2. The existence of the tables are often announced by assistive
>> technologies. So each new table gets announced, adding to unnecessarily
>> verbose output and possible user confusion.
>
> so why not introduce a rule such that AT should skip 'announcing' (does that apply to anything other than screen readers?) the table-ness of layout tables, and just progress through the layout table's cell in the intended order?

Which you CAN do using WAI ARIA role="presentation". That still leaves
you with the other problems Karl outlined. Also, building relatively
solid and well-supported layouts purely with CSS has been possible
since...oh...2001 or thereabouts. Just because you can apply a band-aid
to table-based legacy layouts to make them at least not be announced as
tables in AT is not a reason to carry on using them...


--
Patrick H. Lauke
re·dux (adj.): brought back; returned. used postpositively
[latin : re-, re- + dux, leader; see duke.]

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