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Re: th scope=row

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From: dawn@dawnbudge.co.uk
Date: Apr 6, 2016 10:43AM

You should always have a th with scope 'row' somewhere per row, but it doesn't have to be in the first column. It could be the second, third, etc. It is just a more common design approach that it is in the first column.

The best advice I can give you is to look at the row and work out what would give you the right heading for that row, and set scope="row" on that.

Imagine you had a table of prices for a list products in different countries, and the first column is something not very human-readable like a ID number, and the second column is the names of the products, third onwards were the different countries' prices. You would definitely want the human-readable product name to be used as the heading for that row, sighted users would implicitly work that out but software can't, so that is what gets the th scope=row.

Webaim has some very good articles http://webaim.org/techniques/tables/data and more specifically http://webaim.org/techniques/tables/data#th might help


-------- Original Message --------
> From: "Trafford, Logan" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Sent: 06 April 2016 17:09
> To: "WebAIM Discussion List" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Subject: [WebAIM] th scope=row
>
> I'm documenting steps for non-technical content creators who have some limited control over table creation. I'm looking for a clear explanation of when to define a first column cell as a <th> with scope="row" as opposed to it just being a <td>. Anybody have one, or know where in the W3C or WCAG resources to find one? WCAG references to "simple tables" but it doesn't actually explain what is meant by that (at least I can't locate an explanation). It also references using scope, but I can't seem to find anything that references if or when the first column HAS to be defined as a <th>. Logan This e-mail originates from the City of Ottawa e-mail system. Any distribution, use or copying of this e-mail or the information it contains by other than the intended recipient(s) is unauthorized. Thank you. Le présent courriel a été expédié par le système de courriels de la Ville d'Ottawa. Toute distribution, utilisation ou reproduction du courriel ou des renseignements qui s'y trouvent par une personne autre que son destinataire prévu est interdite. Je vous remercie de votre collaboration.