[thelist] Table Accessibility Question

Luther, Ron Ron.Luther at hp.com
Fri Jun 28 13:11:01 CDT 2002


Hi Gang,


I've built a report that pulls a bunch of data from a database and displays it as a series of tables on the page.  {It's a 'recent shipments' report for a major customer. One page per country, one table with subtotals per location within the country. So each of the tables has exactly the same header information and columns.}

Since some of the column headers were much wider than the data that would be contained in the column, I've used some rowspans in my <th> cells.

Example:
The report shows this ...

************
* Proof of *
* delivery *
************
*    X     *
************

instead of this ...

*********************
* Proof of delivery *
*********************
*        X          *
*********************

The pages validate just fine.

I've added 'summary' attributes to each table.

However, Bobby has decided that since I'm using two rows of <th>s, I must have a complex table and need to be using 'axis' and 'headers' attributes.

What do you folks do about this?

Do you ...

(a) Figure that Bobby just doesn't realize that you don't have a complex table and go merrily on your way.

(b) Use a different technique to wrap the column headers to save space?

(c) Add some other kind of markup to explain to the screenreader that you are using multirow headers and everything is fine?

(d) Do anything special about reusing the same header information in multiple tables?


Thanks,

RonL.





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