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Umm... this is disingenuous. At the time, most websites were built using tables and were completely non-accessible. One of the reasons we moved to XHTML, semant

Umm... this is disingenuous. At the time, most websites were built using tables and were completely non-accessible. One of the reasons we moved to XHTML, semantic markup, CSS instead of Tables... was to enable accessibility.

cyberax 11d ago
No, it's not disingenious. Tables _were_ accessible and easily navigable, including by screen readers. They are also a very logical way of organizing content. > One of the reasons we moved to XHTML, semantic markup, CSS instead of Tables... was to enable accessibility. Again, nope. Try a design with 3-4 columns with the old CSS and see how it behaves. The order of elements in the HTML often differs from the visual order, confusing the readers. It also breaks tab-navigation, even the https://csszengarden.com/ https://csszengarden.com/ has the "View All Designs" button that is inaccessible. Then add absolutely-positioned headers and other popular CSS patterns.
- agos 11d ago
  tables are a very logical way of organizing _tabular_ content. they're a terrible tool for layout, accessibility wise
  - cyberax 11d ago
    No, they're not. They are _perfect_ for layouts, as they naturally support "move left/move right/up/down" directions. To this day, this is STILL not working well for DIV-based designs.
- krupan 10d ago
  I remember tables within tables within tables. Were those really accessible? The humans writing that html couldn't always keep it straight
  - cyberax 10d ago
    Yes? What's problematic with nested tables? You just tab in and out of them. Now try to navigate something like the WSJ/NYTimes home page. If you remember the old days of good UI, there was this idea of "tab groups".