[html4all] summary issue closed

[Joshue O Connor]

Hi Ian and Steve,

Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
>>> If anyone wants to have a telecon, they don't have to wait for Dan or
>>> Chris to announce one. Just speak to our W3C staff contact, Mike, and he
>>> can arrange a telecon whenever. Indeed, I am sure our chairs are happy for
>>> other people to use the regular telecon time even if they're not around to
>>> chair themselves.

It is useful to know that if if we feel there is a need to discuss an 
issue we, (WG members), are in a position to be able to call a 
teleconference. However, Steve has a very good point about having a 
suitable chair in attendance such as Dan, who can add the necessary 
gravitas to the proceedings and provide guidance and advice as needed - 
but thanks for letting us know anyway.

Steve wrote:
>> We have discussed it privately since and thought it may be best to get 
>> > PF WG to review the issue. Now the issue has been closed by the editor.

Ian Hickson wrote:
> That just means I looked at it and took into account all the feedback 
> raised so far.

Again thats good to know.

>There hasn't been much research on the matter (indeed, 
> there hasn't been much discussion even); 

There has been some discussion/research in the past, and while the topic 
has been a little quiet of late, I certainly plan to raise the issue 
again soon on this list and other fora. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] (external) 
[6] [7]

>obviously if there is any new
>> information, such as a clear description of a problem that HTML5 doesn't
>> solve, I would be very happy to take it into account.

I will definitely keep you in the loop.

> Just to clarify, my request to not mention summary="" is merely a
>> restatement of earlier requests to very clearly separate the description
>> of the problem and the description of the proposed solutions (and
>> discussion of their pros and cons). In the past, we have had difficulty
>> separating the two topics (problem and solution), which makes it very
>> hard to do technically sound language design. (Just look at the namespace
>> thread recently for more examples of this.)

While it is true that we do need to separate problems and solutions 
(where possible) I am not really sure into which camp the use of 
@summary currently sits? From the WG perspective, (considering its 
current status) it seems to be a problem, or to be fair it may be more 
concise to say its true status is actually unknown and more research 
needs to be done.

However, for the end user of AT, it is certainly a solution that helps 
them to easily understand the purpose of a data table, without any 
complex user interaction beyond giving the table focus.  It is well 
supported and works. I aim to provide more research soon to substantiate 
this claim.

Cheers

Josh


[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2008Feb/0057.html
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Sep/0103.html
[3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Jun/0181.html
[4] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Jun/0349.html
[5] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Jun/0643.html
[6] 
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200705/help_keep_accessibility_and_semantics_in_html/
[7] 
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2007/html5-microformats-accessibility-testing/