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[WD]: screen reader advice

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From: Terence de Giere
Date: Jul 22, 2005 2:23PM

Bryce Fields wrote:

A little more about screen readers and the scope attribute:
http://usability.com.au/resources/tables.cfm

It's an interesting study. Apparently support for scope
is pretty bleak among screen readers...

A non table version of data may be required to support other devices
besides screen readers. Although not used nearly as much now, text-only
browsers may display a simple table by wrapping rows to the next line if
the table is too wide to fit on the screen, which may make them visually
incomprehensible because the headers will not line up with the data.
This could happen on a cell phone, or with a desktop browser such as
Lynx. If you focus only on screen readers, accessibility problems with
other kinds of assistive technology or other devices may be ignored. For
example magnification can render a table difficult to understand because
perhaps only a few words or even just a few characters may display on
the screen at a time.

If the data and the associated headers is presented as text in a way
that someone could just read the text over the telephone to another
person and be clearly understood, then it should be pretty accessible.

Terence de Giere.