[Irl-dean] HTML Question - Forms, labels and table based layouts

[Barry McMullin]

On Fri, 18 Apr 2008, Joshue O Connor wrote:

> I have to disagree. My reasons being (in no particular order of preference):

Ah, excellent ... we were overdue for a good game of Josh-Barry
geek-ping-pong (grin!).

> 1) The relationships between the form controls and their labels are not
> programmatically determined using the method you suggest.

They aren't? In what sense is the relationship between a table
cell and its header(s) any less "programmatically determined"
than the relationship between a form control and a label element?

> 2) Because of this the user may not be able to understand the purpose of
> the form controls without their explicit label associations and
> therefore if the screen reader user bypasses the table (which I will
> refer to as the containing element) using the F key/E key/INSERT + F3
> functions, then the labels/information that you have provided within the
> table are no longer present.

Hang on ... you are saying to not use a table to mark up
information having genuine "tabular" semantic relationships
because some users might choose to "bypass the table"?  On that
logic one would never use tabular markup at all...

> 3) This method would be useful for sighted users, but thats it.

Don't quite get that.

> 4) Users of screen readers may not know how to interrogate data tables
> as in my experience this is something that power users do and this
> method is dependent on a certain linear browsing stlye (one item after
> another) to work at all.

Again, this is simply advocating not using tabular markup for its
intended semantic purpose (data tables).  I can't go along with
that.  Yes, there is a chicken and egg here.  Historically very
few authors/developers have used table markup correctly, and for
that reason many users have seen (still see?) little benefit in
learning how to exploit it. Ditto for AT developers/vendors. But
the solution to that is surely not to give up on table mark up
where it is sematically appropriate.

"Pong" - back in your court, Josh!

Best - Barry.

--
Barry McMullin, Dublin City University
   phone: +353-1-700-5432
   web: http://www.eeng.dcu.ie/~mcmullin/