Failure to choose appropriate table row and column headings

Name: Charles Belov
Email: charles.belov@sfmta.com
Affiliation: San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency 
Document: UW
Item Number: Understanding Success Criterion 1.3.1
Part of Item: Intent
Comment Type: technical
Summary of Issue: Failure to choose appropriate table row and column headings
Comment (Including rationale for any proposed change):
It is not enough that table rows and columns have headings.  A heading must actually be appropriate to the row or column it appears in and allow distinguishing between that row or column and adjacent rows or columns.

Proposed Change:
Link to new failure, Failure to choose appropriate table row and column headings.

Description

This document describes a failure caused by use of table column- or row-heading content that insuffiently describes or fails to distinguish the column or row.

Examples:

1. Three consecutive rows have a row header (same row, first column) containing the same content.  Either the wrong topic was chosen for column 1, or column 1 and another column need to be combined into a single column to produce a unique heading.

2. Column 1 contains a rowspan attribute and this table does not have scope, id and headers attributes to identify additional headings.

3. Row 1 contains a colspan attribute and this table does not have scope, id and headers attributes to identify additional headings.