

Wizards for complex data tables

From: Terry Thompson <tft@u.washington.edu>
Date: Thu, 26 May 2005 15:15:06 -0700
Message-ID: <003c01c56240$5f610530$0200a8c0@MH350Athompst3>
Hi All, 
What is the state of the art in tools that assist web authors in
creating accessible complex data tables (including prompting authors for
table header and table data relationships)? 
The only tool I've ever seen that attempts to address this from a GUI is
HiSoftware's Table Repair Utility that ships with AccRepair, which works
ok but assumes the user already has expertise in table accessibility
(for example, there's an option "Use the Header ID List wizard to set
the values for the id attribute for the header cells that do not have
one and to build the list of IDs to use as values for headers and axis
attributes" - not all that intuitive for the average Joe). 
Are there other tools/wizards available? Has anyone ever attempted to
create a free web-based accessible table wizard? It seems like it would
be a fairly straightforward process to script an algorithm that parses
the user's HTML table (which they paste into a form), builds a
multidimensional array of the table's elements and their attributes,
evaluates whether the table has nested rows or columns, and prompts the
user in a friendly manner for any unkwnowns such as which cells are
headers and which data cells are represented by these headers, then
pieces all this together to rewrite the table with accessibility added.
If no one has done this, is there any reason why it would not be
Thanks for any input,
Terry Thompson
University of Washington
Received on Thursday, 26 May 2005 22:16:39 GMT
