Edit comment LC-2583 for Accessibility Guidelines Working Group

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Comment LC-2583: Comment Shortname:; Commenter: Charles Belov <charles.belov@sfmta.com>; Message-id:; Section of the document concerned:

or; Refinement of the section concerned:; Status:
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Commenter's response (URI):; Comment:
If HTML editors do not support the scope and header attribute without hand coding, then there needs to be advice to convert complex tables to simple tables.

For example, it is my understanding that Adobe Contribute CS4 does not support these attributes, and Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 does not support a convenient UI for applying them, necessitating hard coding.

Proposed Change: Add paragraph:

If the HTML editor software being used does not support the scope attribute, or does not support these without hard coding and the author wishes to avoid hard coding, it will be necessary to convert the complex table to one or more simple tables. See technique H51: Using table markup to present tabular information; Related issues: (space separated ids); WG Notes: FYI: Adobe Dreamweaver creates scope=â€colâ€ or â€œrowâ€ automatically when an author inserts a table into a page and selects headings. It is correct that modification of a basic table in Dreamweaver allows authors to easily assign specific cells to be headings via a properties panel checkbox, but assigning a scope attribute is not possible in the properties panel. However, in the code view authors can take advantage of the type-ahead feature and make this modification with relative ease, same goes for assigning headers attributes to cells within a complex table. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) the properties panel in Dreamweaver does not contain UI for all possible code options, so the emphasis was on heading cell identification. This of course can be revisited in future releases. For Contribute, it is designed as a far more simple tool, with a primary use-case being to allow authors with appropriate permissions to edit web site regions that are designed to be editable, so a Dreamweaver site administrator might create a complex table and an author using Contribute could modify the table content but might not have the ability to edit the table structure. Contribute also adds scope attributes to table headings for simple tables or tables with up to two levels of row or column headings, but since there is no code-editing in Contribute there is no way to make a fully accessible more complex table without going back to Dreamweaver (or some other code-editor) for remediation.; Resolution: User Agent Notes describe issues in support by assistive technology and browsers. WCAG does not address levels of support by authoring tools. So adding this advice to the User Agent Notes is not appropriate. We will add another note to the technique description for H63, suggesting that authors consider converting complex tables to one or more simple tables. [DONE] Note: Some users may find it easier to work with several simple tables than one more complex table. Authors may wish to consider whether they can convert complex tables to one or more simple tables.; (Please make sure the resolution is adapted for public consumption)