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From: Lori K. Brown
Date: Aug 1, 2002 11:50AM

Dear WebAIM:

I work on a web-based collaboration software product called SiteScape
Forum. We are attempting to make the HTML that our product renders
standards compliant and accessible in the coming version.

In a number of instances we list entries in a table, and the first few
columns of data include a checkbox that users can click to select the
item for deletion. Currently, the column that contains that checkbox
does not have any heading text above it, and there's really no logical
(at least to us) space available in the table to render a label for each
instance of the checkbox. Repetitive labeling ('this is the deletion
checkbox') seems pretty pointless, and a waste of screen real estate.

My questions:

1) Does every column of a data table HAVE to have some kind of text
heading? I understand that column headings should be associated with the
data they label, but do I in fact need to supply headings in the first
place? (I think it's common sense, but we cannot come to agreement on
this in my dept.)

2) Can I solve this problem by using a title attribute on the checkbox
to label it for text reader users, since the purpose of the check box is
readily apparent to sighted users?

To make it easier to tell what the heck I'm talking about, I have
uploaded a screen capture of the table I am talking about at:
http://www.sitescape.com/other/tableslabels.gif

The columns that do have headings above them are associated with their
appropriate data with the tag scope="blah", as appropriate.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Lori K. Brown
User Interface Engineer
SiteScape, Inc.



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