This report results from feedback from the German Central Library for the Blind
(DZB). Please see
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Accessibility#Feedback_from_the_DZB.2C_June_2010
for some background.

We discussed this quite extensively on the English Wikipedia in the past (I think as late as last year for Infoboxes). I think the conclusion was: "Yes please, but unfortunately everyone would have to upgrade his browser to latest generation, so realistically, just not possible".

The warning boxes (mbox and friends) is the clearest example. We worked for months on something that was presented reasonably consistently on all browsers, and in the end we simply had to go with tables. We need almost everyone to be on IE8, FF3 and Safari 4.

So I guess we will need to use WAI ARAI roles for this. Such a property would need to be whitelisted in the parser first.

FWIW, in r68230, i implemented a mode for the {|...|} syntax that would output divs with table-* styles instead of a html table. This is just a prove of concept, I don't think it will stay in the core, especially since it doesn't work with older browesers, as pointed out in #2.

created bug 24659 for whitelisting WAI ARIA

I note in the Sanitizer.php that we actually do support role="presentation" (no other roles though).

I think it's safe to close this? includes/Sanitizer.php has whitelisted role="presentation" for all elements since 1.21.