WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

TD, TH, SCOPE

for

From: David Ashleydale
Date: Aug 21, 2012 11:58AM

Hi,

I have a philosophical question about whether there's a difference between
assigning a cell in a table as a TH or assigning it as a TD but with
scope="row".

One of my developers is saying that he doesn't want to assign the first
column of the table as THs because the information in the first column
aren't really "headers" for the row -- they aren't descriptive of the row,
they are just data related to the first column header. But he does want to
give them scope="row" so that they act as kind of an "index" for that row.

I understand what he's getting at, but I'm wondering what the people on
this list think. Does a screen reader like JAWS handle TH differently than
'TD scope='row'"? Or is this just a case of six of one, half dozen of the
other?

Thanks,
David