Examples of complex tables in the wild needed
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for those who've been following the growing HTML5 debacle...the latest twist being discussed is the exclusion of table id/headers. instead, some people seem to be proposing creating better heuristics in assistive technology that somehow will magically understand which headings refer to which cell.
i've argued that this is ludicrous, as there's an infinity of possible combinations in complex tables that no AT could resolve through heuristics, but as ever burden of proof has been placed on those arguing against the removal of id/headers to show that there are cases where heuristics would fail. innocent until proven guilty? hmm...
so...does anybody have good examples of complex tables used in the wild? note that they don't necessarily have to have actual id/headers, just need to be very complex and not easily solvable by some simple algorithm that just goes to the leftmost/topmost cell and guesses that that's the heading relating to it.
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Patrick H. Lauke / webmaster / University of Salford
co-lead: WaSP Accesibility Task Force
take it to the streets ... WaSP Street Team
personal: splintered | photographia | redux
co-author: Web Accessibility - Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance
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| redux wrote: |
| ...as ever burden of proof has been placed on those arguing against... |
On the other hand, these activities have to consider a huge range of requests with many factors. Sometimes the suggestions are so naive that it's correct that the proposer be required to find use-cases, gauge feasibility and perhaps make a demo implementation before their proposal can be considered. However, this can make it an uphill battle for valid cases to become recognised.
A balance has to be struck and, after all, they and we are only human.
I am usually given the luxury of recoding tables so they fit into the regular scope model or reformat them using headings, paragraphs and lists. However, I expect webmasters would usually have to work with the arrangement of cells as given to them.
I remember Joe Clark did some tables research for Adobe. He invited people to send in the worst tables they could find, so he might have a ready-made archive of irregular cellular atrocities if you ask nicely.
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My CV type thing and my Life of Ben (Blog). Nigel Peck's Accessify Forum Requirements.
Last edited by Ben Millard on 25 May 2007 02:58 pm; edited 11 times in total
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| redux wrote: |
| so...does anybody have good examples of complex tables used in the wild? note that they don't necessarily have to have actual id/headers, just need to be very complex and not easily solvable by some simple algorithm that just goes to the leftmost/topmost cell and guesses that that's the heading relating to it. |
All my examples are eBooks on Project Gutenberg, so unfortunately I can't link you to the HTML directly; you'll need to view source and do a search on <table cos they're big documents.
It also means that "the author shouldn't have arranged their table in that stupid way" doesn't work: the authors are long dead, and I as eBook creator am not at liberty to change their work.
- Noteworthy Families has some tables that really should have been a long narrow table, but instead that's been chopped in two and joined to make a shorter wider table. Hence headers mid-row.
- Theory of Storms some heavy maths calculations going on in tables.
- English Composition has some crazy tables of football teams, in which the headers run down a middle column, and there's tons of cells with rowspan as well. Also a table of baseball statistics ... made me seriously consider using the axis attribute, but couldn't fathom out how, so ended up rendering it as two tables.
- Lamarck Big table which has sensible column headers, but the rows have no rhyme nor reason whatsoever, there's empty cells and rowspans all over the place; ideally you'd want the table read column by column not row by row.
- How to live has numerous tables with at least two levels of column headers, and at least one giant table that has two levels of column headers, plus a whole bunch more inserted in between rows.
Warning: many of these date from my pre-accessibility period
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I'm on the road at the moment (literally), but this is one I keep referring to:
http://broads-authority.gov.uk/...
Perhaps a point to make would be that current ATs (e.g. JAWs) have actually implemented this, and the example above works well (there are also special keyboard commands for dealing with them).
If they don't support the table markup, you couldn't consider complex tables accessible. If HTML5 doesn't support accessibility, it won't be an acceptable format to use for things like Section 508 or the DDA.
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Nomensa / AlastairC
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| redux wrote: |
| so...does anybody have good examples of complex tables used in the wild? note that they don't necessarily have to have actual id/headers, just need to be very complex and not easily solvable by some simple algorithm that just goes to the leftmost/topmost cell and guesses that that's the heading relating to it. |
Have you spoken the Joe? Didn't he call for as many complex data tables as possible in the wild a year or so ago for some screen reader testing?
You probably already know but just in case you forgot.
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Andy Saxton
Logoblog: Web Standards, Accessibility & Usability
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There is a heap of complex tables to be found from this site:
http://www.fedstats.gov/
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Steve Faulkner
Technical Director
TPG Europe
The Paciello Group | Web Accessibility Tools Consortium
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This is part of the Complex Table Examples thread started by Laura Carlson.
Anne van Kesteren mentions it in the second paragraph of XTech 2007: 5 minutes on HTML5:
| Anne van Kesteren wrote: |
| By the way, I think the latest e-mail from Ian Hickson on complex tables and the one from Maciej clearly shows that we are very much interested in accessibility. I think the WHATWG has developed a different kind of approach to these kind of issues over the years from other people, which may led people to think we don’t give a shit about it or something. |
| Ian Hickson wrote: |
| To conclude, I must once again give you my thanks for these links. I'm not sure, however, that they support the argument in favour of headers="" specifically being put in HTML5, given scope="" and the definition it has in HTML5.
Do you agree? If you don't agree, what would be really helpful is an explanation of what it is that headers="" does that scope="" does not. I can immediately grant you two things:
|
Maciej is from Apple and his message is centered on this (reformatted in BBcode):
| Maciej wrote: | ||
|
(EDIT) I've started making real-world table tests to see if scope really is adequate for the irregular tables which exist in the wild.
- I'm using Gez Lemon's Table Inspector extension for Firefox as a yardstick.
- How usable the output would be for a human is something I can't test since I become too familiar with the data whilst recoding.
- If anyone could run a real AT through the tests please say so here.
- It's entirely possible that I've cocked up some markup; if you spot mistakes please list them here.
Nobody has said they contacted Joe Clark, so I sent an e-mail to him and the PDF/UA leader. I found his collection of irregular tables which I have started working through. Laura Wisewell confirmed that recoding Project Gutenburg tables for research purposes should be acceptable use.
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My CV type thing and my Life of Ben (Blog). Nigel Peck's Accessify Forum Requirements.
Last edited by Ben Millard on 25 May 2007 12:13 pm; edited 5 times in total
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Selection of tables from .govt.nz
- http://www.dol.govt.nz/publications/general/soi2006/21statfinperf.html
- http://www.msd.govt.nz/publications/statement-of-intent/2007/forecast-financial-statements.html
- http://www.mfe.govt.nz/publications/about/soi/2007/html/part2/vote-environment.html
- http://www.linz.govt.nz/publications/statement%2Dintent%2D0607/financial/financial-statements/financial-performance/index.html
- http://elabs.govt.nz/web-standards/table-ids-and-headers.html
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Nice examples, Terrence. More the merrier. 
I've had a reply from Joe Clark about examples of data tables:
| Joe Clark wrote: |
| I will get on to this when I get back next week. |
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My CV type thing and my Life of Ben (Blog). Nigel Peck's Accessify Forum Requirements.
Last edited by Ben Millard on 24 May 2007 12:29 pm; edited 4 times in total
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Considering they are retaining font for WYSIWYG editors (euch!), I don't understand why there is so much resistance to headers?
It isn't the most elegant technique, but it works and is supported now.
| Ian Hickson wrote: |
| > Examples "in the wild":
> > http://broads-authority.gov.uk/... That table could be done using scope="" without sacrificying much, if anything, in the way of accessibility. I'll take my hat off to you, however, that really is a real world example that would work. |
I'm not clear how Ian thinks scope would do it on the example I authored, is it one of the ones you've had a go at?
Btw, the data is copyright so, be careful if/how you publish it, or search & replace the values.
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Nomensa / AlastairC
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Yeah, the Tide Table using scope was the first one I had a go at. It looks quite promising because the headers are in fairly regular positions. Having re-read the "Assistive Technology and Tables" section of chapter 6 by Jim Thatcher in Web Accessibility: Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance, it seems scope has a little support in market leading screen readers.
I actually think headers is elegant. It can make complex and irregular tables accessible in cases where scope doesn't cut it, all without rearranging cells.
I've created an e-mail template for spreading this discussion around:
| Ben 'Cerbera' Millard wrote: |
| Subject: HTML5 and the headers="" attribute
Hello [person or entity], The Web Hypertext Applications Technology Working Group (WHATWG) are proposing to remove the headers="" attribute from HTML. They are keeping the scope="" attribute because this is considered adequate to describe all data tables apart from those they consider too rare. [1] In [some article you wrote][2] you wrote: > [A summary you gave about the need for headers="" in irregular data tables.] Do you find irregular tables to be so rare they are safely ignored? [1] <http://www.w3.org/mid/Pine.LNX.4.62.0705172042370.1180@dhalsim.dreamhost.com> [2] <[URL to the article they wrote, where possible]> Ben 'Cerbera' Millard -------------------- http://projectcerbera.com |
- Joe Clark. Has replied in this topic, later on.
- Jim Thatcher. Replied with some examples from government. I've returned more questions and created Jim Thatcher samples using scope. He replied to these.
- WebAIM. Jared Smith replied; was already tracking the mailing list discussion.
- Roger Johansson. Hasn't needed to use headers but thinks it should stay.
- Roger Hudson. Replied promptly and in detail. Returned more questions.
- David Woodbridge and Robert Spriggs.
- Gez Lemon. Has replied. I've returned a link to this topic.
- Web Standards Project (WaSP) Accessibility Task Force (ATF). Asked whether they had already approached AT vendors about headers and scope support. (AFAICT, nobody at WHATWG has ever contacted an AT vendor about HTML5.)
- Tommy Olsson. Promised to look at the headers algorithm proposed in HTML5, but can't promise whether he'll write a tutorial for it.
I'll keep this message updated._________________
My CV type thing and my Life of Ben (Blog). Nigel Peck's Accessify Forum Requirements.
Last edited by Ben Millard on 06 Jun 2007 09:33 pm; edited 11 times in total
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More examples in the wild:
http://daf.csulb.edu/...
http://www.wisc.edu/...
http://www.sa.sdsu.edu/...
Anne van Kesteren said yesterday,
> If there are lots of tables out there that currently use
> the headers= attribute and end users rely on them I suppose
> the traversal algorithm should take that into account,
> as Maciej suggested earlier. [1]
I asked what qualifies as "lots"? Reply was:
> I don't think we're looking for use cases but actual usage.
> How much content would break if the new algorithm was used
> and headers= was not taken into account. [2]
Best Regards,
Laura
[1] http://lists.w3.org/...
[2] http://lists.w3.org/...
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Laura L. Carlson
Information Technology Systems and Services
University of Minnesota Duluth
Duluth, MN U.S.A. 55812-3009
http://www.d.umn.edu/...
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Ben "Cerbera" Millard wrote:
> I've started making real-world table tests to see if scope really is
> adequate for the irregular tables which exist in the wild.
[snip]
> Once there's a decent collection of tables, I'll probably add them to
> the WHATWG Forum for further discussion and testing.
Have you considered joining the HTML 5 Working Group?
Ian Hickson posted:
> Anyone can actually join the W3C HTML Working Group. I encourage
> everyone interested in the development of HTML5 to take part. If you
> don't take part, and the language develops in a way you don't like,
> then you have but yourself to blame.
>
> Taking part in the group is not a big commitment. You can spend as
> much or as little time contributing; you don't need to read every
> e-mail on subjects you don't care about, you don't need to call in or
> attend face-to-face meetings. In fact, the W3C has stated in the
> group's charter that no binding decisions will be made at meetings;
> you are guaranteed equal say whether you are present or not.
Members get a vote on the issues. The accessibility and standards advocates currently seem to be a minority.
For further info and instructions for joining visit:
http://ln.hixie.ch/...
Laura
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I started the process of joining the HTML WG a couple of months ago, then work got busy. I've resumed the process and am now waiting for step 5. Thanks for reminding me about it. (EDIT: I'm now on the group and blogged about other members.)
| lcarlson wrote: | ||
I asked what qualifies as "lots"? Reply was:
|
I've seen HTML5 advocates informally talk about it being in use a century from now. Rebuilding or retrofitting sites to be more accessible is already happening in the public sector and increases each year as accessibility becomes more high-profile. That makes understanding the use cases very important, imho.
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My CV type thing and my Life of Ben (Blog). Nigel Peck's Accessify Forum Requirements.
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Yeah, I have some photos of insane tables on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/...
I have a folder on my machine of examples from real-world PDFs.
My listing of accessible-cinema reviews –
http://joeclark.org/...
– uses every table HTML feature, which added 25K to the page weight for arguably no benefit. Don’t tell Hixie. Yes, headers= is in there.
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