Hi Ian, > Is the need not served by <caption>?
No. A caption is provided visually. Like it says in the Use Case section of the "Mechanism to Summarize a Table" Wiki page [1] for the majority of sighted users a summary is not needed. For instance: <table summary="Rows contain destinations, traveling dates, and grand total. Columns contain expense category and total. The first column contains merged table cells."> <!-- Remainder of table --> A sighted person can see how the rows and columns are laid out and where the cells merge by a quick scan or glance. They typically wouldn't need an explanation. Providing it visually would be extra verbiage that most authors/designers would be reluctant to include visually on a page because of redundancy. A programmatically-determined summary mechanism serves a very specific and most critical use for blind and non-visual users. It provides an affordance equivalent to the visual user scanning a table for spatial structure, orientation, and relevance. A summary mechanism provides a reasonable accommodation. It enables a person with a visual disability to have an equal opportunity. > HTML5 attempts to solve the problem using the <caption> element. Caption doesn't solve it. It is not a replacement for @summary. There are some possible long term solutions like a new <summary> element with an "open" attribute listed in the Wiki [2] that might offer growth to better practice. But since HTML5 has feature freeze and since a new element would not be backward compatible @summary is needed in HTML5. Best Regards, Laura [1] http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/SummaryForTABLE#head-4fd8f8462033b251ea8328b598d9482140ff3f1f [2] http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/SummaryForTABLE#head-847d2ebafa6828471a3d2777ad3676944007c35d