WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Using ARIA grids

for

From: chagnon
Date: Aug 10, 2020 2:22PM

I've found that the term "Caption" is used to mean many things by different
people.
With tables, people often call the table's summary a caption.

And then there is a real paragraph of live body text that appears before or
after the table, similar to photo captions.

In academic publishing, this paragraph of text is called "prefatory text"
and appears between the title and the actual table (or figure/image). Was
developed long before HTML and found to be the best method to inform and
educate readers...before they encounter the table or figure.

The terms caption and summary should be cleared up by the industry...and
standardize across all media: HTML, PDF, EPUB, whatever.

In our testing, we prefer explanations (a k a prefatory text) so that it is
available to all users, not just those using text-to-speech such as screen
readers.

- - -
Bevi Chagnon | Designer, Accessibility Technician | <EMAIL REMOVED>
- - -
PubCom: Technologists for Accessible Design + Publishing
consulting . training . development . design . sec. 508 services
Upcoming classes at www.PubCom.com/classes
- - -
Latest blog-newsletter - Simple Guide to Writing Alt-Text