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Re: Data in tables or lists with accessibility and responsive design in mind

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From: Steve Green
Date: Feb 11, 2014 4:25PM

I would have a slightly different recommendation. Report bugs to the vendors but publish code that works right now. In my view it is irresponsible to publish code that *should* work but doesn't. Sadly there are a number of people who are perfectly happy to publish code that they know doesn't work, and say it's not their problem if browsers and ATs don't render that code according to standards.

In some cases people are using ATs that pre-date the standards, and in some cases the standards do not fully specify what the behaviours of the browsers and ATs should be. Not everyone can afford to upgrade to the latest AT version even in the Western world, let alone poorer parts of the world. And many people cannot quantify the benefit of a costly upgrade.

There is a disturbing narcissism in the development community. The most important people on any project are the project owner and the end user. Everything that developers do should be done with the intention of supporting them. But some developers, designers and consultants choose to pursue their own agenda even when it is not in the best interest of the people they should be serving. In my view that is not professional.

Steve Green


-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Bourne, Sarah (ITD)
Sent: 11 February 2014 15:20
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Data in tables or lists with accessibility and responsive design in mind

Ben,

Before settling on the DL approach, you should take a look at a recent thread on the W3C WAI discussion list. This message, in particular, discusses some problems with how AT has implemented DLs:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2014JanMar/0031.html
(See http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2014JanMar/thread.html for listing by thread - you can see that discussion has been lively!)

While "use the right element for the job and reports bugs to AT vendors" is the right thing to do (as is pointed out someplace in that thread) I think you have some choice in what the "right" element is, and so may want to consider how it will actually work for users.

sb
Sarah E. Bourne
Director of Assistive Technology
Information Technology Division
Commonwealth of Massachusetts
1 Ashburton Pl. rm 1601 Boston MA 02108
617-626-4502
<EMAIL REMOVED>
http://www.mass.gov/itd
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [ <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of ben jarlett [ <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: Monday, February 10, 2014 4:36 PM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Data in tables or lists with accessibility and responsive design in mind

Thanks for all the thinking... Yes Léonie that is the catch... I want it to work on smaller screen sizes, and I don't think it'll work on a phone in a table... so I'm gonna go with the DL suggestion and tableish styling for large screen display. :)