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

for

From: ron@ahead.org
Date: Feb 11, 2014 5:10PM

Once again I am going to speak from the public education space and in particular from the perspective of
California since it currently is the best exemplar. In most instances they no longer have funding to maintain
upgrades nor to buy SMA's for products such as JAWS, if the could even get one in the first place. For
others when categorical funding went away several years ago they lost the ability to maintain access and
are forced to support JAWS going back to version 7 based on the most current version. Legally in many
instances they are also forced to be entirely product agnostic in their work in trying to avoid risk
management issues. Am I supporting this absolutely not, except for product neutrality which actually is
required in most states by statute. Most of my work is in the area of recommending unbiased pragmatic
and cost effective advice at the institution or system level.

I will now let you go back to your regular programming. If any wish to engage in a conversation out of the
public eye please email me privately and I will will love to hear about your experiences or successes.

Ron Stewart

> -------Original Message-------
> From: Steve Green < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Data in tables or lists with accessibility and responsive design in mind
> Sent: Feb 11 '14 18:25
>
> 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. :)
>
> > <EMAIL REMOVED>
> > > >