Re: accessible tables

Actually, you can really treat them as separate tables, but then use some clever CSS formatting tricks such as:

* Use Divs with float attributes to make the tables sit side by side 
* Control table/cell borders on different sides of the cells to make some appear less like an “edge"
* Make the second caption readable by screen readers only
* You can also the summary attribute to add additional explanations for screen readers.
* You can also use a div before a table to add text that looks like a merged header, and then use the 2 table captions for “1-5” and “6-9”
* ARIA can be used in some cases to add information, but I would do a lot of testing across screen readers.

This is how I approached this page of Spanish accent codes. For the record, the 3 tables did start out as one table.
http://sites.psu.edu/symbolcodes/languages/psu/spanish/


I added padding/margins to separate the tables, but you can get them closer together.

Hope this helps.
Elizabeth


> On May 4, 2018, at 4:21 PM, Michael A. Peters <mpeters@domblogger.net> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I am sure this is covered somewhere, but I just can not find where.
> 
> Tabular data, 9 pairs of key = value data. But the table cell contents are short, so instead of just two columns I want to do four columns where the third is a continuation of the first and the fourth is a continuation of the third, e.g.
> 
> [ caption of the table]
> [ key ] [ value ] [ key ] [ value ]
> 001     first     006     sixth
> 002     second    007     seventh
> 003     third     008     eighth
> 004     fourth    009     tenth
> 005     fifth
> 
> 
> Is there a way to mark that up so screen readers will read them as pairs in the order 001 to 009 in order?
> 
> I can't be the first to have needed this.
> 

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Elizabeth J. Pyatt, Ph.D.
Accessibility IT Consultant
Teaching and Learning with Technology
Penn State University
ejp10@psu.edu, (814) 865-0805 or (814) 865-2030 (Main Office)

The 300 Building, 112
304 West College Avenue
University Park, PA 16802
http://accessibility.psu.edu

Received on Friday, 4 May 2018 21:05:21 UTC