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Re: Summary and datatables?

for

From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Sep 16, 2013 1:53PM

I would say (and I'm speaking for myself rather than the working group) that there is no requirement to provide a caption for a table, only that text that is intended to serve as a caption for a table would need to be marked up as a <caption>.

If the table doesn't have a caption it may mean that the table is less understandable than the same table with a caption (or it may not), but this doesn't fall under WCAG. WCAG 1.3.1 requires that "Information, structure, and relationships conveyed through presentation can be programmatically determined or are available in text." If the caption isn't in the presentation you don't need to mark it up as such.

Still, a caption is often a good idea for help make tables more clear, and in those cases you should use one and mark it up as a <caption>.

Thanks,
AWK

Andrew Kirkpatrick
Group Product Manager, Accessibility
Adobe Systems

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