Re: ISSUE-130 table-layout - Chairs Solicit Alternate Proposals or Counter-Proposals

On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 8:31 PM, Leif Halvard Silli
<xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no> wrote:
> SEONDLY: Those problems that HTML4 describes are much less relevant
> today. It is enough to look at the dichotomy that HTML4 describes - and
> which you echo: 'authors should use style sheets to control layout
> rather than tables'. As things have developed, this has become largly
> false dichotomy - exactly via CSS, authors can control tables. In fact
> is possible to read what HTML4 says as saying «rather than trusting
> tables, authors should trust css». Those problems which HTML4 describes
> are such that I have trouble understanding what the description is
> about - but it is more about function than about philosophy.

I cannot follow your argument here.

> THIRDLY: No risks, you say. But perhaps there is a risk that authors,
> who could have increased their pages' accessibility by  adding aria to
> their table based pages, just let their pages be as they are, because,
> after all, their pages causes no error in theor current state, while
> they would get validation errors if they added aria to their tables.

False.

Doug's proposal is a null change proposal and table role="presentation"
will not cause a validation error according to the current HTML draft. See:

http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/content-models.html#annotations-for-assistive-technology-products-aria

"Authors must not set the ARIA role and aria-* attributes in a manner
that conflicts with the semantics described in the following table,
except that the presentation role may always be used."

(Conceivably, a hyper-intelligent checker might penalize authors for
abusing tables
but it would penalize them regardless of the presence of role="presentation",
not because of it.)

> As for the third, point, then I don't agree with myself. I tend to
> agree with Ian in that an honest @role is a 'godsend', which allows
> authors to check whether they have used an element for a valid purpose.

What you mean like using an element with some sort of defined semantic meaning,
like a table for a table? Oh wait... ;)

--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis

Received on Saturday, 15 January 2011 00:37:15 UTC