WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: Screen readers and nested tables

for

From: Don Mauck
Date: Feb 19, 2010 11:45AM

Whether developers should or should not use nested tables is not the point. The point is that they do and AT packages should work with them. As I said acouple of days ago, this was a known issue in earlier versions of JAWS and has been fixe as a requested onlly patch for JAWS 9 and is available starting in JAWS ten.

-----Original Message-----
From: Simius Puer [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: Friday, February 19, 2010 10:15 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Screen readers and nested tables

Hi Birkir

There is no real reason why anyone should put a table within a table *in
most common scenarios*. Even if assistive software can "render" it
correctly it is likely to be less than accessible.

The example on W3Schools is technically acceptable within the realms of code
validity but I think it is simply meant to represent an example - not best
practice.

In terms of accessibility tables should really be kept as simple as
possible.

Sadly there is a huge gap between this ideal world where developers all know
what they are doing and reality. So to answer your question it really
depends on if you are talking about the world at large, or just your own
code. If it is the latter then simply avoid nested tables, and complex
tables in general.

Have a good weekend!