Re: <tfoot> headers & Accessibility?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott Rippon" <scott.rippon@arts.monash.edu.au>
>
>My question to the group is would it be possible for the table example
>found here (http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-HTML-TECHS/#data-tables) to be
>updated to include <thead>, <tbody>, & <tfoot> tags and show whether or
>not the <td> tags under a <tfoot> need headers attributes?

My understanding is that the 'id' and 'headers' attributes are only needed
when there is ambiguity in the layout of the table. For example, if you use
'colspan' or 'rowspan', there could conceivably be one data cell in the same
column (or row) as multiple headers. In that case, you would need to specify
which one it should refer to.

Your example table is simple enough that all data cells have a one-to-one
relationship with their headers and therefore don't need any additional
information. The exception might be that the scope attribute 'scope' should
be set to 'col' for all headers. Jim Thatcher's explanation of this
requirement to me was that the first <th> in the first row could
theoretically have either scope. After that explanation, I use the 'scope'
attribute in all data tables, but I only use 'id' and 'headers' when dealing
with more complex table structures.

The other thing I noticed was that your <tfoot> seemed redundant. First of
all, in your use, they should still be <th> elements instead of <td>. Also,
I've only seen <tfoot> elements used after the <tbody> instead of before it
like your example. I'm not sure there is a benefit to your use (right after
the <thead>) but if I saw the table, I'd probably be confused by the
redundancy.

Later,
James Craig

Received on Thursday, 13 March 2003 18:32:26 UTC