Re: HTML5 alternatives to table summary don't work in current browsers, and Screen Readers

David,
Right this  is what I had experienced too but really was fed up with the way things are going.
Dropping  something that works simply because someone gets a kick out of implementing a new technique and wanting to push it makes no sense to me.
Real users are impacted if the summary is dropped.
Yes if one wants to propose 3 new additional techniques it is fine. But they have to become AT and browser supported in order to become sufficient techniques.
And backward compatibility should be retained. i.e something that works should not be  deprecated.
One other point:
The caption element is really meant to work as a title / heading for the table and not meant to be a verbose description.
So I am against the use  of caption to capture what the summary  is meant to contain.
Secondly I  find it difficult to believe that people do not understand that  not everyone needs access to the contents of the summary.
The HTML 4.01 summary attribute is meant to contain text to aid non-visual access. Period. 
Now content authors / developers may not understand   what should go into the summary to really aid non-visual users and may draft poor summaries. But that's hardly a reason to drop the summary.
Well if some descriptive text concerning the table is important for all users then it should not be in the summary but placed visibly  for all to read.
Sailesh Panchang
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On Thu, 6/20/13, David MacDonald <david100@sympatico.ca> wrote:

 Subject: HTML5 alternatives to table summary don't work in current browsers, and Screen Readers
 To: "'Mark Sadecki'" <mark@w3.org>
 Cc: "Janina Sajka" <janina@rednote.net>, "WCAG WG" <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>, team-html-a11y@w3.org, kirsten@can-adapt.com
 Date: Thursday, June 20, 2013, 6:39 PM
 
 Hi Mark on the call I had
 
 #HTML5 #a11y replacements for Table Summary attribute don't
 work in JAWS and
 NVDA in IE Chrome, and Firefox browsers.
 http://www.davidmacd.com/test/details.html 
 
 Cheers
 David MacDonald
 
 CanAdapt Solutions Inc.
   Adapting the web to all users
             Including those
 with disabilities
 www.Can-Adapt.com 
 
 -----Original Message-----
 From: Mark Sadecki [mailto:mark@w3.org] 
 Sent: June-20-13 2:09 PM
 To: David100@sympatico.ca
 Subject: Will you be joining us
 
 Hi David,
 
 Just a quick reminder, we are going to walk through the
 spec. 
 #html-a11y-test zakim code 21191
 
 Best,
 
 mark
 
 -- 
 
 Mark Sadecki
 Web Accessibility Engineer
 World Wide Web Consortium, Web Accessibility Initiative
 Telephone: +1.617.715.4017
 Email: mark@w3.org
 Web: http://w3.org/People/mark

Received on Friday, 21 June 2013 13:40:22 UTC