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The affect of "scope" attributes in <th> tags

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From: Langum, Michael J
Date: Aug 26, 2010 8:42AM

Will screen readers correctly handle nested scope for columns and rows?

For example, will the following table be correctly presented by a screen reader? This would mean I could avoid the coding overhead of using "id" and "headers".

<table border="1">
<tr>
<th scope="col" rowspan="2">Major Category</th>
<th scope="col" rowspan="2">Sub Category</th>
<th scope="col" colspan="2">Year 2009</th>
<th scope="col" colspan="2">Year 2010</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="col">Amount</th>
<th scope="col">% Change</th>
<th scope="col">Amount</th>
<th scope="col">% Change</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row" rowspan="2">Supplies</th>
<th scope="row">Stationary</th>
<td>$200</td>
<td>3</td>
<td>$212</td>
<td>6</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Cleaning</th>
<td>$150</td>
<td>1</td>
<td>$152</td>
<td>1</td>
</tr>
</table>

-- Mike