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JAWS Screen Reader and detection of tables as layout or data

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From: Chun Wei Ho
Date: Jan 22, 2008 7:00PM

Hi,

I'm in the process of making a web application web accessible. We have
a number of table layout based pages that need translating to either
CSS, or modified in a way that JAWS and other screen readers will
detect them as layout pages.

I'm working with JAWS 9.0 for Windows, and I'm rather confused as to
how it detects whether a table is layout (which means it ignores the
table) or data (which means it reads table with X rows and Y columns).
It does detect most of them correctly but there are some layout tables
that I cannot get it to detect as layout no matter what modifications
I make.

Is there a checklist of triggers or rule of thumb that I can follow?

Thanks a lot :)
CW