Re: H63: Why td for header cells?

On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 8:51 AM, <makoto.ueki@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Name: Makoto Ueki
> Email: makoto.ueki@gmail.com
> Affiliation: Infoaxia, Inc.
> Document: TD
> Item Number: H63
> Part of Item: Examples
> Comment Type: technical
> Summary of Issue: H63: Why td for header cells?
> Comment (Including rationale for any proposed change):
> It is obvious that cells in 1st row(Name, Phone#, Fax#, City) are column
> headers as they don't present any data. Why do you use td instead of th for
> them? This is not semantic. Plus, readers  would misunderstand that scope
> attribute is not supported by major screen readers including JAWS.
>
> Proposed Change:
> The following cells should be marked up with th:
>
> - Cells in 1st row(Name, Phone#, Fax#, City)
>
> - Cells in 1st colomn(Colleague, Friend)
>
> - Cells in 2nd column(Clive Lloyd, Gordon Greenidge, Joel Garner, Stephanie
> Wen)
>
>
>
> This is semantic and JAWS will be able to present each data cell
> associating headers.
>
>
>
>
================================
Response from the Working Group
================================
Technically, the presence of the scope attribute should be enough to signal
assistive technologies that these are header cells. However, we agree that
using <th> in this case is more appropriate and will revise the example to
use <th> for cells that have the scope attribute.

Loretta Guarino Reid, WCAG WG Co-Chair
Gregg Vanderheiden, WCAG WG Co-Chair
Michael Cooper, WCAG WG Staff Contact


On behalf of the WCAG Working Group