Re: [webwatch] Making a Table Accessible

Is this something we should also be looking at adding to ATAG techniques? (I
guess it depends in part on the results that Kelly gets...)

cheers

Charles

On Wed, 7 Mar 2001, Al Gilman wrote:
snip
  There is a bug in how we did the LABEL functionality for form controls in HTML
  4.  Because the LABEL points to the control, instead of the other way
  around, a
  given LABEL can only explain one control.  In your example, the TH values at
  the head of the columns are clearly the LABELs for the multiple checkboxes in
  the column.  So:

  Please experiment with upgrading the markup in the table.

  Experiment #1: add a scope attribute to the column headers:

  For example, what had been

  <th>dial a 1</th>

  becomes

  <th scope='col'>dial a 1</th>

  etc.

  Experiment #2: use 'headers' attribute for the same information:

  Here the change to the headers becomes:

  <th id='123'>dial a 1</th> -- all ID values must be different from one another

  and the typical data cell entry in that column becomes

  <td headers='123'><input type=checkbox></td>

  There is a logical principle that we didn't spell out well enough and that the
  assistive technology should be applying, which is that if a hotlink or a form
  control appears in a table cell, the table headers associated with that table
  cell should be treated as effective control labels of the form control or
  hyperlink.

Received on Thursday, 8 March 2001 10:21:36 UTC