Design Forums - UK Graphic Design & Web Design Forum

Awww your too kind you really are, but what would I do on DF then?

spam the forum with your link heheheheheh
*just kidding Greg!!*

I cant it's not finished and I'm sort of a security freak.
I will when I have though, let some peeps get their own back, I mean it's only right, lol.

XHTML tables
Now data tables can have huge problems with accessibility and are by far the most complex side of accessible web coding.

I'm not talking about XHTML tables for layout but for there actual use that being to display data.
So we have a XHTML table like so ~

<table>
<tr>
<td>City</td>
<td>Weather</td>
<td>Day</td>
<td>Month</td>
<td>Year</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Liverpool</td>
<td>Hot</td>
<td>12</td>
<td>October</td>
<td>1993</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>London</td>
<td>Cold</td>
<td>14</td>
<td>December</td>
<td>1994</td>
</tr>
</table>

Now a screen reader will read that out as ~
Weather Day Month Year Liverpool Hot 12 October 1993 London Cold 14 December 1994

Which is pointless if you have 50 odd rows how do they know which row is to which column?

So what we want to do, is add a caption to give the table a header to explain it better, give it a header section to display the column options and then apply row headers to tell blind users which city has which result.

So our new table now looks like this ~

<table>
<caption>Weather results for the UK over the last 10 years, exciting topic, lol</caption>
<thead>
<tr>
<th scope="col">City</th>
<th scope="col">Weather</th>
<th scope="col">Day</th>
<th scope="col">Month</th>
<th scope="col">Year</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<th scope="row">Liverpool</th>
<td>Hot</td>
<td>12</td>
<td>October</td>
<td>1993</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">London</th>
<td>Cold</td>
<td>14</td>
<td>December</td>
<td>1994</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Now when a screen reader hits this it can now tell the blind user more efficiently what is headers and where columns start and stop which breaks it up a lot better.

Jaz
Key:
Blue ~ XHTML

Edit: Check out Harry's coded table for a great example.

Woh, really didn't know that at all!

Thanks

Nope me neither, you're just full of useful knowledge Jaz!

Yeah, lol.
I was thinking last night, after bluecote's post, I could probably put a site together from what I know.
I have only had to code XHTML tables twice, I deleted the first 1 3 days later as I thought of a better way of doing it, but it stuck so I thought I would share.

Any way no worries if I think of anything else I'll let you know,
Or if anyone has any techniques I have missed by all means post them, always happy to increase my knowledge base, TBH,

Glad it has helped anyway.

Jaz

Validation is a tool | New City Media

found that and thought it was relevant ^ enjoy

Well I'm not going to say I validate every page to XHTML strict, the toughest of the lot, there are 4 settings, because some wont. If I include a link with parameters in it, using the ampersand (&) for example, to an external site that my site visitors want, will I not include it just to validate the page, no of coarse not that is stupid if my site visitors want it.

Also if I use a textarea tag I refuse to under principal to, add cols and row attributes to the tag, and instead apply height and width with CSS, as to me they should be included in CSS as they effect how that tag looks. This to me anyway is something that should have been moved, and deprecated, in the last update, again does it matter?
No.

Also will I not use target, even though it has been deprecated?
No because it works when JS has been turned off, requires less code and improves performance, so has huge benefits.

But apart from those, minor issues, that only pop up very occasionally, do I code to the highest level of standards, XHTML strict, the rest of the time?
Yes.

Why?
Because it shows the quality of my work as a developer, the fact that that guy, or gal, doesn't even code to strict then well, TBH shows me the quality of his work, and it is not as high as it can be IMO.

But the fact that Google doesn't validate to W3C guidelines, pay attention to that as I will get to it in a min, so we shouldn't argument, well don't get me started.
Not all of us are lemmings, and only do what the big boys and girls do.

Just because 1 big company doesn't code to quality does not mean that we as developers should follow their bad example.

IBM does and to the highest level of strict, not transitional.
And their pretty big, IMO.

But 1 fact you have appeared to got mistaken with is coding to standards is not the same as coding for accessibility, they are 2 different things.

W3C and Legal guidelines, these are not the same, or even run by the same people.

The W3C validator, which is what you are talking about, is a (X)HTML validator that tells web developers if their work is up to high quality standards, by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Now the W3C, who is ran by Tim Berners-Lee, who actually created the world wide web, are the people who set what divs are, how much padding should be in certain areas, which tags are used for what, what new tags are allowed to enter the html spec, as in version 5, that sort of stuff, browser developers then try to implement them, or more recently put ideas forward, such as CSS transitions and transformations, dont get me started personally that should be included in the JS spec not CSS, which is where they are going to end up, due to the fact it is technically animation, but, hay.....

Now the legal guidelines, which is what I am on about, are what countries set to make sure that all their citizens can view the same content on-line, and off-line, and are not set by the W3C, which controls the html spec, and thus invalid or valid coding.

Now section 508, is the US guidelines to code to under US federal law to make your site accessible to US citizens, we are not constrained by what it says, if you server is in the UK you are confined to UK law. Now the UK one falls under the 2005 Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), and is not as clear cut, bit like the UK constitution in comparison to the US constitution, but by following the US guidelines you will be safe under UK law, due to the fact that they are intensive and the guy who headed the 508 (sub-)committee was Jim Thatcher, the guy who created the first screen reader way back in the day.

Now their is a 508 validator run by cynthiasays.com.
This is not what that article you quote was on about, they where on about the W3C validator.

However the author you reference was right on one point, most validators wont tell you if your site is accessible, which is different to valid coding.

But for clarity does Google validate to section 508, legal guidelines?
O crap it does, ooooooo how about Yahoo!, yeah that does, oooooo what about Live.com, o surprise, surprise it does.

As they must do as they are US companies, and are therefore constrained to section 508 under US law.

Please note:
Google was only done first to prove the point otherwise it would have been done last.

So the big boys actually do, they don't validate to the W3C which is different, and to me shows the quality of the designers/developers work, but that is a different topic.

Hopefully that has settled the point though.
Jaz

Once again, My posts arn't intended to anoy or disprove yours, you obviously know a lot about the subject your arguing which is perhaps where I fall short!

The only reason I posted that link was as it completed a strange circle from another of your posts, the tattoo font thread, someone posted the "I <3 Helvetica" tatoo and thats the company the guy works for.

I read your post and understand a little more about the topics so that alone must be a good thing.