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From: Angela French
Date: Thu, Mar 24 2011 10:27AM
Subject: valid table?
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I have been asked to do an accessibility review of my agency's website. It was built by contractors a number of years ago, and we have many content contributors who create/maintain the page.

On many pages tables are used for layout to present/organize documents available for download. Here is an example:
http://www.sbctc.ctc.edu/college/d_EMSI.aspx

While I personally would not use tables for presentations like this, I'm wondering if it really is inaccessible. While there is no <th> tag, they did use an <h> tags (not the semantically correct one though) and <p> tags in the <td>s . Given that this is not a complex table, it does linearize well.

I would be grateful for any opinions about this.

Angela French
Internet Specialist
State Board for Community and Technical Colleges
360-704-4316
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
http://www.checkoutacollege.com<;http://www.checkoutacollege.com/>;

From: John E Brandt
Date: Thu, Mar 24 2011 11:09AM
Subject: Re: valid table?
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I am not sure that Tables vs. CSS is an accessibility issue unless the
linearization is compromised. The use of the <th> is only for Data Tables
(see http://webaim.org/techniques/tables/ for reference).

Taking a quick look at your site, there appears to be quite a number of PDFs
linked. I would me more concerned about these be inaccessible than the Table
layout issue.

~j

John E. Brandt
www.jebswebs.com
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
207-622-7937
Augusta, Maine, USA

From: Michael.Moore
Date: Thu, Mar 24 2011 12:48PM
Subject: Re: valid table?
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The problem with the page is not the use of the layout tables but the use of image links where the alt text is simply "PDF" the alt text should tell me what document I am downloading. In a links list I just see ...PDF PDF PDF PDF...

Mike Moore

From: Angela French
Date: Fri, Mar 25 2011 9:00AM
Subject: Re: valid table?
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Yes, I'm aware of that one Mike. There are MANY things wrong with this site. I was wondering about the use of a table in this context though.

From: Angela French
Date: Fri, Mar 25 2011 9:15AM
Subject: Re: valid table?
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Hi Mike,
While we are on the subject of PDF icons, I did this approach on the last site I built. I would be interested in your opinion about this method of presenting a document link and indicating it is a PDF.

<li>
<a href="pathtofile.pdf">Document Title <span class="filesize"> [<img style="border:none;" src="/graphics/ pdfLogo.gif"
alt="Portable Document Format" /> 100<abbr title="kilobytes">KB</abbr>]</span></a>
</li>

From: Steve Faulkner
Date: Fri, Mar 25 2011 9:39AM
Subject: Re: valid table?
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Hi Angela,

best practice advice is to not use them for layout.
failing that ensure the content linearizes correctly
Also ARIA role="presentation"[1] can be used on layout <table>'s to
hide the table structure from assistive technology.

[1]http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/roles#presentation

regards
stevef

On 24 March 2011 16:26, Angela French < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> I have been asked to do an accessibility review  of my agency's website.  It was built by contractors a number of years ago, and we have many content contributors who create/maintain the page.
>
> On many pages tables are used for layout to present/organize documents available for download.  Here is an example:
> http://www.sbctc.ctc.edu/college/d_EMSI.aspx
>
> While I personally would not use tables for presentations like this, I'm wondering if it really is inaccessible.  While there is no <th> tag, they did use an <h> tags (not the semantically correct one though)  and <p> tags in the <td>s .  Given that this is not a complex table, it does linearize well.
>
> I would be grateful for any opinions about this.
>
> Angela French
> Internet Specialist
> State Board for Community and Technical Colleges
> 360-704-4316
> = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
> http://www.checkoutacollege.com<;http://www.checkoutacollege.com/>;
>
>

From: Steve Faulkner
Date: Fri, Mar 25 2011 9:48AM
Subject: Re: valid table?
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some useful testing explanation of ARIA role=presentation

Layout Tables that are No Longer Read as Data Tables Due to ARIA Role
http://wps.pearsoned.com/WAI_ARIA_Testing/179/45991/11773772.cw/index.html


regards
stevef

On 25 March 2011 15:11, Angela French < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Hi Mike,
> While we are on the subject of PDF icons,  I did this approach on the last site I built.  I would be interested in your opinion about this method of presenting a document link and indicating it is a PDF.
>
> <li>
> <a href="pathtofile.pdf">Document Title <span class="filesize"> [<img style="border:none;" src="/graphics/ pdfLogo.gif"
>  alt="Portable Document Format" /> 100<abbr title="kilobytes">KB</abbr>]</span></a>
> </li>
>
>

From: Michael.Moore
Date: Fri, Mar 25 2011 1:15PM
Subject: Re: valid table?
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Assuming that the left and right square brackets are just there to highlight the use of the image this code should work fine. I would recommend just using alt="PDF" since "Portable Document Format" is less widely understood.

I went ahead and tested the code using JFW versions 9-12 and found a bit of quirkiness in versions 9 and 11. In these two versions the full text "Document Title Portable Document Format 100KB" was only read when I read the links in using text reading commands or a links list. If I navigated by tab it only read "Document Title." I only tested on one workstation though so it may have been a workstation issue.

With 150 JFW users in our network we are used to seeing a lot of different behaviors with seemingly identical configurations. For example, we were looking at an issue this morning where one of our users workstations would not read the items in a drop down menu as he moved through the choices, he had to exit the dropdown and go back to get JFW 9 to read what was selected. We could not identify a problem in the code nor could we duplicate the problem on two other workstations with similar configurations.

Mike Moore