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Re: Table SUMMARY Tag

for

From: Langum, Michael J
Date: Mar 2, 2011 8:54AM

Ms Pyatt,

The summary attribute is not visually displayed in a browser. It's purpose is to assist users of assistive technology to understand the structure of the table. E.g.

<table summary="this table lists responses to survey questions by sub-group. Responses for each sub-group are provided as absolute numbers, and percentage of whole.">

-- Mike


-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of ejp10
Sent: Wednesday, March 02, 2011 10:25 AM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: [WebAIM] Table SUMMARY Tag

Due to the various legal issues, our university is looking to improve implementation of accessibility.

One suggestion I have heard is to include a SUMMARY attribute for every HTML table, but I am seeing conflicting information about it.

Some sources say the summary is to summarize trends in the data, but others say it is to specify table structure (although I thought the CAPTION tag and the SCOPE/headers tags dis that as well. What are opinions on this topic? Are there any good sources of code snippets we could look at?

Any information/opinions appreciated.

Thanks

Elizabeth

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-Elizabeth J. Pyatt
Instructional Designer