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Re: Table captions and page headings

for

From: Léonie Watson
Date: Aug 15, 2015 11:01AM

> From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
> On Behalf Of Dennis Deacon
> Sent: 15 August 2015 16:46
> Presently (not to say it's the appropriate way), many of our data tables have
> page headings immediately above the table. To date, we've added table
> captions to existing tables, and in some cases, used the immediately previous
> page heading as it best describes the table.
>
> I considered add a page heading within the caption tag. It validates via
> HTML5 validator, however, the VO screen reader does not read it. Maybe
> improper semantics or screen reader snafu. I can style the caption to look at
> a heading, to visually eliminate the duplication, but is that truly the best
> approach?


The easiest approach would be to drop the heading, and use only the table with its caption. Most screen readers have a shortcut for navigating between tables, so a heading offers no particular navigational value. The caption is either announced automatically, or available as part of the table content, so if the heading duplicates the caption it offers no additional value there either.

Léonie.

--
Senior accessibility engineer @PacielloGroup @LeonieWatson