Actually, as far as I understand the accessibility issue, you would be
completely valid in using tables for layout in this instance. From the
WCAG 1.0 guidelines:
5.3 Do not use tables for layout unless the table makes sense when
linearized. Otherwise, if the table does not make sense, provide an
alternative equivalent (which may be a linearized version
<http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/wai-pageauth.html#linearized-table>).
[Priority 2]
*Note.* Once user agents
<http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/#until-user-agents> support style sheet
positioning, tables should not be used for layout. Refer also to
checkpoint 3.3 <http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/#tech-style-sheets>.
I would think that a photo gallery in tables would linearize just fine.
I would say if no significant solution presents itself, then you should
be fine to use tables, as long as all the proper accessibility tags and
attributes are used.
Antonio Barrera
Library Web Development Manager
Princeton University
Alexander Johannesen wrote:
On 7/13/06, Amy M Ostrom <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Or does anyone know about photo galleries and accessibility?
There is a bigger group of people which can both see images and have
accessibility needs; low-vision users (estimated some 30% of all
users).
Having said that, there's really nothing stopping you making tables
perfectly accessible, and it the sense of images they *are* presented
in a tabular fashion. This is where we use common sense instead of
rigid rules, so there is no reason to feel that using tables for this
is somehow wrong (unless you want to go into the whole WAI 2.0 debate
:).
Do it the way you do, and clean up the generated code to fix the worst
offenders. If you still want to be strict on it, try talking to the
GAWDS community (http://www.gawds.org/) about gallery options. I seem
to recall there were some discussion about this a while back, but the
gist was that most gallery software were equally crap in accessibility
regards. Maybe things have changed.
regards,
Alex
--
"Ultimately, all things are known because you want to believe you know."
- Frank Herbert
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