[html4all] @abbr, short TH fallback for screen readers

[Leif Halvard Silli]

Gez Lemon 2008-08-24 11.42:

>> Are there User Agents who support this attribute?
> 
> JAWS and Window-Eyes support it. I'm not sure how far back support is,
> but it's from at least Version 8 of JAWS, and at least version 5.5 of
> Window-Eyes.

 >

> I've set up a test table [1] that uses abbreviations for the headers,
> "Course Name" and "Course Tutor". In JAWS and Window-Eyes, the headers
> are announced in full when the column headers are read themselves. But
> when referenced as part of data (navigating from cell to cell in a
> row, or querying the headers for the current cell), both JAWS and
> Window-Eyes only announce the abbreviation.

Hi Gez. Thanks for checking it!

I now see that @abbr is also mentioned at least in in WCAG 1 [1] 
and 2 [2]. (However WCAG 2.0 lacks any test case for it.)

> Caveats:
> 
> 1: Window-Eyes 5.5 doesn't announce the abbreviated version in Firefox
> - just IE.


I have the impression that it in general is safer to use IE than 
Firefox when it comes to the most well known sceen readers.

How do we go about for getting it into HTML 5 then? Raise it on 
the tracker? The issue belongs to the @summary issue! (WCAG 1.0 
links @abbr and @summary under the heading "Providing summary 
information". [3] ) Perhaps it can be included with that one?

Btw, just to try out an idea: XHTML 2.0 has <summary/> instead of 
@summary. So how about a <summary/> element with a double 
function: 1) providing a Table summary when used as direct child 
of TABLE, 2) providing a TH summary, when used as child of TH. 
(This said, as support for CSS improves, it might not be much 
advantage with a element vs an attribute. Via CSS one can soon 
show/hide content and attributes ad Lib.)

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-TECHS/#tech-abbreviate-labels
[2] 
http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-WCAG20-HTML-TECHS-20050630/#datatables_abbr
[3] http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-HTML-TECHS/#table-summary-info
-- 
leif halvard silli