mark up for complex data tables

Hi all

I am working with a site owner to convert their existing site to be more
accessible. At present they are serving up MS Office documents (doc & xls)
rather than html pages. To make things worse they are dumping Excel tables
into Word docs as images. These tables are complex and I'm having trouble
gettign the mark-up correct. I've read Kynn's article but still am having
problems.The issue has become more urgent as I have an appointment in two
days with a screen reader user to see how her assistive technology works and
I would like to get the table done by then so I can hear the difference
first hand. This is as far as I have got (I've put colours and aligns in for
ease of use - these will of course be handled by CSS in the real thing):

<html>
<head>
<title>complex table - RAS work in progress</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
</head>

<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000" >
<table width="90%" border="1" cellpadding="3" bordercolor="#000000"
summary="Table showing comparison of pupil's marks for xxxxx school by
subject: comparison is by gender, with statistical neighbours, across the
LEA and nationally.">
<caption> 2001 Key Stage 3 results for xxxxxx school. </caption>
  <tr bgcolor="#CCCCCC"> 
    <th colspan="3"> 
      <div align="center">School name</div>
    </th>
    <th rowspan="2"> 
      <div align="center">Subject</div>
    </th>
    <th colspan="3"> 
      <div align="center">Band</div>
    </th>
    <th colspan="3"> 
      <div align="center">LEA</div>
    </th>
    <th colspan="3"> 
      <div align="center">National</div>
    </th>
  </tr>
  <tr bgcolor="#CCCCCC"> 
    <td> 
      <div align="center">Boys</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">Girls</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">All</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">Boys</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">Girls</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">All</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">Boys</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">Girls</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">All</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">Boys</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">Girls</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">All</div>
    </td>
  </tr>
  <tr> 
    <td> 
      <div align="center">data</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">data</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">data</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">subject 1</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">data</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">data</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">data</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">data</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">data</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">data</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">data</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">data</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">data</div>
    </td>
  </tr>
  <tr> 
    <td> 
      <div align="center">data</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">data</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">data</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">subject 2</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">data</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">data</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">data</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">data</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">data</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">data</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">data</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">data</div>
    </td>
    <td> 
      <div align="center">data</div>
    </td>
  </tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>

As usual there seem to be several different ways of doing things and I'm a
bit confused by getting scope to cover more than one column. Also should I
be using thead or header ids?

Any input would be greatly appreciated

tia
Julian


Julian Scarlett
Web Design & Document Management System Officer
PPU
Education Directorate 
Sheffield City Council
0114 2735721
mob 07904914976
julian.scarlett@sheffield.gov.uk 

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Received on Tuesday, 20 November 2001 04:28:38 UTC