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Re: complex table question

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From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Oct 29, 2012 9:54AM

Angela
As for the empty cells, yes. I like seeing NA in empty cells to tell
you the truth. My problem with the table as it currently stands mostly
stems from the fact that it contains a lot of text. I much prefer text
outside of the table, while the table only contains numbers, words or
very short phrases. When it contains a lot of text it starts feeling
like a layout table, at least for a screen reader user.
You could perhaps make the table 4 columns instead of the TRS column
being split in two, move some of the textual info into a text that
compares the plans, either preceeding or following the table. Again,
these are just my thoughts/impressions, and not strictly speaking
accessibility best practices.
Also it would be good to offer up an Excel document for download that
contains this info in a spreadsheet format. It is not a sufficient
solution on its own, since Excel is somewhat proprietary in nature
(office is not exactly cheap), but for those who use it, are visually
impaired, and need to fully understand comparisons of this nature, it
is tremendously helpful.
I will take another look at the table tonight and send you
impressions, if I come up with something I think may be of use to you.
The original answer stands in that I am very happy to see you used the
table attributes to mark every single cell with row and column
information. It may be a pain in the old behind, but for this type of
table it is absolutely a lifesaver.
Cheers
-B

On 10/29/12, Angela French < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Birkir,
> Is there something that can be put in empty cells (N/A perhaps?) that would
> make them less confusing?
>
> Angela French
>
>>Using table reading commands I'd
>>very quickly get lost in the table without the ID and Header tags causing
>> row
>>and column title being read for each cell in the table, especially since
>> there
>>are empty cells in it. If you skipped them the table would become awfully
>>confusing, unfortunately. Probably not the answer you wanted to hear, but
>>from a screen reader user perspective that is the truth I must present. ;)
>>Cheers -B
>>
> > > >