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Re: Missing support for scope="rowgroup" attributes within tables

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From: Sailesh Panchang
Date: May 20, 2014 8:04AM


Hello John,
Poor support for the scope attribute is not new.
Window-Eyes never supported the scope attribute.
See http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/Techniques/ua-notes/html#H63
Till a few versions ago, even JAWS' support for rowgroup was lacking
and this is embodied in the first sentence of the above user agent
notes.
I had written to Apple Accessibility team over a year ago covering a
handful of issues including poor support for the scope attribute.
The bug reporting process was very inaccessible which Apple
acknowledged and accepted the email filing.
In 2013, NVDA would not honor headers-id method if the headers
attribute referenced a TD cell with an id ... valid in HTML4. See NVDA
bug #3244.
(and by extension, td with a scope attribute) ... they said it is a
Firefox issue.
So I had filed a bug with Firefox too (881048 ).
HTML 4 recognizes that in reality in complex tables it is not
possible to always markup all header cells as TH. So an id or scope on
a TD cell is permissible and this is documented. But this is illegal
in HTML5 which is a problem. I have noted this before on other lists
too.
It is fine if one can mark up all header cells as TH. But when one is
constrained, id or scope on TD cells should be alright.

Thanks and regards,
Sailesh


On 5/19/14, John Foliot < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Sailesh Panchang wrote:
>>
>> JAWS has the most robust support for scope and does read the row header
>> cell when the group changes both in FF and IE.
>> Example at
>> http://mars.dequecloud.com/demo/Table-multi-colWithRowspan.htm
>> One does not experience this when using NVDA or VO on Safari.
>> Thanks,
>> Sailesh
>
> Hey Sailesh,
>
> So, to re-state your comment, there are bugs in both NVDA and VO with
> regard
> to scope support. (True / False / Other).
>
> If there are bugs, are you aware if they have been filed at the respective
> companies?
>
> As a general comment (for the broader list) identifying a bug is a great
> thing, following up to ensure that the bug is report is even better :-)
>
> If you need help with filing the bugs, ping me off list and happy to
> assist.
>
> JF
>
>
> > > >