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Re: Problem with JAWS Table Navigation?

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From: Jared Smith
Date: Dec 21, 2009 3:18PM

On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 9:18 PM, Jared Smith wrote:
> I've put together some basic examples and some additional thoughts on
> our blog at http://webaim.org/blog/jaws-ate-my-tables/

I thought I'd post a quick update on the JAWS and data tables issue.
Apparently the newest version of JAWS (version 11.0.756 released Dec.
17th) has improved logic for handling data tables that have table
headers (<th> elements). Can anybody verify this? You could try with
the examples in the article at
http://webaim.org/blog/jaws-ate-my-tables/

If this works, this is excellent news - and shows that Freedom
Scientific was responsive to the stink we made about this issue.

Also, James Craig also pointed out that role="grid" is the proper ARIA
role for data tables. In my testing, adding <table role="grid"> to
data tables caused JAWS 10+ to always treat them as data tables. As
noted previously, role="presentation" causes them to always be treated
as layout tables. ARIA to the rescue!

The blog posting above has been updated to reflect these developments.

Jared Smith
WebAIM