WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Word documents and tables

for

From: Jeremy Merritt
Date: Oct 26, 2010 7:57AM

Hi all,

In the WebAIM article on creating Word documents:

http://webaim.org/techniques/word/

It mentions two key points:


1. There is no way to assign table headers or <th> elements to a table created in Word.
2. There is no way to add row headers (headers across the side of a table) in Word.

The article suggests that the user mark that Word "Repeat as header row at the top of each page." But there is no fix for row headers.

So, are one-dimensional tables OK in Word, but if a document contains a 2-dimensional table (or a more complex table) that contains row headers, is the suggestion to only provide that document in PDF/HTML format with the tables properly tagged? Does WebAIM have an "official" suggestion on this?

Thanks,

Jeremy