H63: Why td for header cells?

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.

Received on Tuesday, 1 September 2009 16:51:13 UTC