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Re: When is use of scope, col and/or colgroup important for accessibility?

for

From: Jared Smith
Date: Jul 23, 2012 10:36AM

Because screen readers assume the scope of table headers, explicitly
defining scope isn't really necessary except for when the screen
reader will assume an incorrect scope (for example, when the top left
had cell is a row header instead of a column header). It makes me a
bit uncomfortable when screen readers assume things (see
http://webaim.org/blog/semantic-automation/) and it's extremely easy
to add scope attributes, so I usually recommend doing so.

I'm not aware of any accessibility benefit of colgroup, rowgroup,
thead, tbody, or tfoot (except perhaps improved comprehension of
multi-page printed tables).

Jared