[thelist] arguments pro css & xhtml / con tables

Ian Anderson ian at zstudio.co.uk
Fri Jun 9 05:30:43 CDT 2006


Robert O'Rourke wrote:

> as I understood it some aspects of accessibility were to do having 
> the correct source order e.g. content first, sidebars, navigation 
> etc... last.

This is true. But many CSS layouts don't in fact improve on this over 
the equivalent layout in tables.

> Most articles I've looked at that advocate CSS layouts also go over 
> the importance of having well semantically structured documents 
> (based on user experiences) and I thought this couldn't be achieved 
> using tables.

Well, true but it's irrelevant to tables vs CSS. If you use proper HTML 
like lists and headings, your pages will be more accessible than if you 
don't. It doesn't matter if the layout is tables or CSS

> I don't know how a screen-reader would go through a table based 
> layout but if it reads the html top to bottom then some might be 
> waiting a while to get to what they want, on every page.

Yes it does, and yes they are, respectively. This doesn't change in CSS
layouts. Using a screen reader is really hard, but users have typically 
adapted to the different requirements and can whizz around quite fast - 
especially if they use the right shortcuts, if they know the site well, 
and if the page has good structure.

But when they get a problem, the consequences for them are far greater
and that's where the time goes. Also, the mental map of a screen reader 
user is usually grossly different from the mental map of a sighted user 
for the same site - that can create misunderstandings that result in big 
confusion for the screen reader user.

Hope this helps

Cheers

Ian

PS - If you're interested, why not download the trial version of JAWS
from Freedom Scientific, turn off your monitor and have a shot?

You'll need to use Ctrl+Home to get to the top of a page, Insert+Down
Arrow to read all automatically, F6 for links list and F7 for headings list.

Modern versions of JAWS have gotten rid of the need to explicitly
activate forms mode, and are easier than ever to use.

See also 
http://www.rnib.org.uk/xpedio/groups/public/documents/publicwebsite/public_rnib003593.hcsp
  and http://www.webaim.org/techniques/jaws/keyboard-shortcuts

-- 
zStudio - Web development and accessibility
- http://zStudio.co.uk
Snippetz.net - Your personal, private code library
- http://snippetz.net




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