Should Visual Studio 2008 throw an accessibility error (508) with a 100% table driven layout?

Question

I'm trying to make sure my work is 508 compliant more and more these days, but noticed that VS2008 doesn't throw an error if you have a 100% table driven layout instead of css.

I always thought that to be 508 compliant you needed to drop the "tables for layout" idea ...

If this is true, how can I force studio to make these errors instead of warnings?

Answer 1

I don't believe using or not using tables for layout makes your site 508 compliant or not. It's whether you have title and alt tags for table cells, images, links, don't depend on Javascript, etc.

Answer 2

The problem is that VS2008 has no sense of intent. Even under 508, it's correct to use tables to present tabular data. The compiler can look at a layout and see that it includes complexly-nested tables, but not whether the use is incorrect.

Answer 3

Tables are still the correct and valid way to display tables of data.

Answer 4

As you write here "100% table driven layout", the error would be correct. Layout should NOT be done with tables, but instead with DIV tags. The design world that has accepted CSS standards goes nuts when things aren't designed appropriately with DIVs, as they hate TABLE layouts.