Re: Accessibility of federal statistical tables

Hmm,

In Guideline 3, the WCAG 1.0 text uses PRE in an explicit counter-example:
<blockquote>
Furthermore, using presentation markup rather than structural markup to
convey structure (e.g., constructing what looks like a table of data with an
HTML PRE element) makes it difficult to render a page intelligibly to other
devices
</blockquote>

And then, in the text of Guideline 5 one reads:  <Q>Tables should be used to
mark up truly tabular information ("data tables").</Q>

I could not, however, find a specific checkpoint that addresses this issue!

I understand that JAWS is better understanding this formatting than some
competing screen reading products.


Message-Id: <sa6d3d47.067@MAIL.NYSED.GOV>
Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 08:13:33 -0500
From: "Steven McCaffrey" <SMCCAFFR@MAIL.NYSED.GOV>
To: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Subject: Accessibility of federal statistical tables

Hello:

     I decided to check the accessibility of federal statistical tables.
Does anyone have any thoughts on the format used in, as just one example,
Per capita income table (ESBR) 
http://www.bea.doc.gov/briefrm/tables/ebr5.htm? 
Any comments?
Note: As noted before, I am using JFW 3.31 and don't have the latest table
handling commands so I can't comment on whether tables like this one can be
traversed cell by cell.  
It seems to be fairly accessible assuming I am interpreting the table
correctly.  Apparently the first column is per capita income for the year
1999, then there are columns from Jun to Nov 2000.  If I count columns, I
can figure out what column a given dollar amount falls under.

Just curious,

-Steve

Received on Tuesday, 23 January 2001 12:39:57 UTC