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

[Gez Lemon]

Hi Leif,

2008/8/24 Leif Halvard Silli <lhs at malform.no>:
> HTML 4 has the @abbr for table cells, aimed at screen readers,
> primerely. It is sofar not included n HTML 5. Should it be kept?

I think it should definitely be kept.

> 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.

Caveats:

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

2: The verbosity settings for Window-Eyes must be explicitly set to
any of the header reading modes (it's off by default), apart from
RX/CY, where only the row number and column number would be announced.

[1] http://juicystudio.com/wcag/tables/abbrheader.html


Cheers,

Gez


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