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Comment LC-1078: Comment Shortname:; Commenter: Gian Sampson-Wild <gian@tkh.com.au>; Message-id:; Section of the document concerned:

or; Refinement of the section concerned:; Status:
assigned to; Type:; Resolution status:
Response drafted Resolution implemented Reply sent to commenter; Response status:
No response from Commenter yet Commenter approved disposition Commenter objected to disposition
Commenter's response (URI):; Comment:
SCOPE: One of the HTML techniques is to usee the scope attribute to associate header cells and data cells in tables. Research has shown that SCOPE is not supported by any known assistive technology and therefore should not be advocated.

Proposed Change:

Remove the SCOPE HTML technique, OR indicate that it is not supported yet, and TH & TD are preferable; Related issues: (space separated ids); WG Notes: [TEAMC] scope is supported by HPR. I did quite a bit of testing and worked with Jim Thatcher and spoke with Alan Cantor also. Jim has provided this test page which I have posted at: http://www.eramp.com/david/tablesample2.htm Technique H63 User Agent and Assistive Technology Support Notes says: "The scope attribute is not supported by current screen readers when there is more than one row of headers and the scope attribute is used on the first row." I think it would be more accurate to say: "The scope attribute is not supported by most current screen readers and it is advisable at the current time to use the TH element instead. The visual presentation of TH element can be adjusted using stylesheets (see ###)" Discussed in the 30 November 2006 telecon: Resolution: Referred to committee to be considered as part of AT push http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2006/11/30-wai-wcag-minutes.html Discussed in the 25 January 2007 telecon: sent back to Team C http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2007/01/25-wai-wcag-minutes.html Discussed in the 08 February 2007 telecon: ACTION: David to incorporate comments from survey. http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2007/02/08-wai-wcag-minutes.html Survey Comments (@@ David to incorporate): http://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/35422/20070208-teamc/results#x1078 March 12, 2007. David redoes the testing and makes new response based on Shailesh's comments below. Issue#1 Problem text under Description for H63 HTML Techniques (SCOPE for tables) in Techniques for WCAG 2.0 "For simple data tables like the one in Example 1, this technique can be used instead of the more complex technique, "Using id and headers attributes to associate data cells with header cells in data tables." Comment: Above statement is not warranted. It is like saying for a simple image, use the alt attribute instead of the longdesc attribute which lets one assign elaborate descriptions for images. Proposed: The SCOPE attribute is not supported by assistive technology for tables that use rowspan / colspan. Its use today is suggested in two situations both relating to simple tables: - data cells marked up with <td> that also function as row header or column header - header cells marked up with <td> instead of <th>. Sometimes authors do this to avoid the display characteristics associated with <th> and also do not choose to use CSS to control the display for <th>. (see proposed example below that illustrates both these situations) Issue#2: Refer: Example 1 under H63 HTML Techniques in Techniques for WCAG 2.0 Comment: i. The use of SCOPE for a simple table in cells that use <TH> is futile. In fact if TD is used then SCOPE should be used for such a simple table. Some screen readers that do not support SCOPE do not read any headers as they are programmed to do for simple tables. So I would not recommend this example. ii. The statement ' Following the HTML 4.01 specification, it is marked as a td element because it is both a data cell and a header cell.', too is unnecessary in the light of the text proposed above under description. Also it is not the objective of this document to educate the reader about the HTML specs. Proposed: Include an example with column#1 containing serial numbers for rows in the table and the second column containing the key value for the row. The cells in the second column may then use scope=row. The cells in the first row too are marked up with <td> and use scope=col. <table border="1"> <caption>Contact Information</caption> <tr> <td></td> <td scope="col">Name</td> <td scope="col">Phone#</td> <td scope="col">Fax#</td> <td scope="col">City</td> </tr><tr> <td>1.</td> <td scope="row">Joel Garner</td> <td>412-212-5421</td> <td>412-212-5400</td> <td>Pittsburgh</td> </tr><tr> <td>2.</td> <td scope="row">Clive Lloyd</td> <td>410-306-1420</td> <td>410-306-5400</td> <td>Baltimore</td> </tr><tr> <td>3.</td> <td scope="row">Gordon Greenidge</td> <td>281-564-6720</td> <td>281-511-6600</td> <td>Houston</td> </tr> </table> Hi Sailesh Iâ€™m writing to get some clarification about your email to the committee (below) about the SCOPE attribute. In your email you say that SCOPE does not work with tables that use rowspan or colspan. Are you sure you donâ€™t mean rowgroup and colgroup which are values for the SCOPE attribute? John Slatin, a screen reader user on the committee says that rowgroup and colgroup are supported in JAWS 7.1 and 8. Any clarification would be helpful. Thanks. David MacDonald www.eramp.com Hello David / John, I do mean rowspan and colspan. Here is example code for a table that uses both. I have used scope=col in the table cells in first two rows (last 2 columns) I have used scope=row in the first two columns for America and only for first column for Asia. Now JAWS 7.1 and JAWS 8 are able to read column headers in both rows for the cells below. Which is terrific. Makes coding easier. But JAWS does not voice both row headers in col# 1 and 2. For America is reads only the country names (both columns have scope=row) For Asia it reads continent name only. With WinEyes 6, one can make it read just the continent name and column headers in first row. Not the col/row headers in second row or column. This is default behavior whereby it reads cell contents of first row and first column as headers. In fact WinEyes does this for the phone-fax# table I sent in earlier too. It does not read the scope =row set on cells in col#2. <table summary="Data is in last five rows and last two columns."> <caption> Numbers of participants by gender and country. </caption> <colgroup> <colgroup> <colgroup span="2"> <thead> <tr> <th scope="colgroup" rowspan="2">Continent</th> <th scope="colgroup" rowspan="2">Country</th> <th scope="colgroup" colspan="2">Adult person</th> </tr> <tr> <td scope="col">Women</td> <td scope="col">Men</td> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td scope="rowgroup" rowspan="3">America</td> <td scope="row">USA</td> <td>11</td> <td>12</td> </tr> <tr> <td scope="row">Canada</td> <td>21</td> <td>22</td> </tr> <tr> <td scope="row">Mexico</td> <td>31</td> <td>32</td> </tr> </tbody> <tbody> <tr> <td scope="rowgroup" rowspan="2">Asia</td> <td>India</td> <td>41</td> <td>42</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Malaysia</td> <td>51</td> <td>52</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> Discussed in the 05 April 2007 telecon: resolution: Accept proposed resolution to LC-1078 regarding scope as amended http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2007/04/05-wai-wcag-minutes.html DONE David to revise UA notes per feedback on 25 Jan. call. [partial accept] DONE Include user agent notes for H63 to: The ROW and COL values of the SCOPE attribute are currently supported to a large extent by most current versions of JAWS, and IBM Home Page reader. However there are still some problems and WindowEyes support SCOPE is inconsistent. The same is true for Japanese versions of these screen readers. Versions of JAWS prior to version 5 and older versions of WindowsEyes have inconsistent support of SCOPE. At the current time we recommend the use of the TH element wherever possible. Refer to [related resources] for additional information on user agent support. DONE add to related resources: test results on Tables in popular screen readers: http://www.eramp.com/david/tablesample2.htm DONE add the following to the end of the intent section However, there are some circumstances where SCOPE is desirable. Its use today is suggested in two situations both relating to simple tables: - data cells marked up with <td> that also function as row header or column header - header cells marked up with <td> instead of <th>. Sometimes authors do this to avoid the display characteristics associated with <th> and also do not choose to use CSS to control the display for <th>. DONE Replace the current Example with this example. Example 1 In the following example Column #1 contains serial numbers for rows in the table and the second column contains the key value for the row. The cells in the second column may then use scope="row". The cells in the first row too are marked up with <td> and use scope="col". <table border="1"> <caption>Contact Information</caption> <tr> <td></td> <td scope="col">Name</td> <td scope="col">Phone#</td> <td scope="col">Fax#</td> <td scope="col">City</td> </tr><tr> <td>1.</td> <td scope="row">Joel Garner</td> <td>412-212-5421</td> <td>412-212-5400</td> <td>Pittsburgh</td> </tr><tr> <td>2.</td> <td scope="row">Clive Lloyd</td> <td>410-306-1420</td> <td>410-306-5400</td> <td>Baltimore</td> </tr><tr> <td>3.</td> <td scope="row">Gordon Greenidge</td> <td>281-564-6720</td> <td>281-511-6600</td> <td>Houston</td> </tr> </table> DONE add link to the table doc in HTML spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/tables.html#h-11.2.6 DONE add H51 to related techs for H63 Internal WD updated 06 April 2007. Respomse : http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-comments-wcag20/2007Jul/0007.html; Resolution: We have added a User Agent note on H63 that warns users about the poor support in earlier versions of sceen readers. Current screen readers have come a long way in supporting SCOPE but there are still some minor problems. At the current time, we recommend the use of the <TH> element wherever possible. However, there are some circumstances where SCOPE is desirable. We have added a similar note to the table techniques (H51 and H43) recommending the TH element over the Scope attribute and suggesting the use of Stylesheets to adjust the look of the TH element.; (Please make sure the resolution is adapted for public consumption)