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Re: [External Sender] Table Accessibility

for

From: Brian Lovely
Date: Jun 9, 2020 5:44AM

Khaleel asked " A quick question related to adding Alternative Text to
Tables. Would a table be inaccessible if it lacks Alt Text? "

Alt is an attribute of the <img> element; it has no effect on any other
element. Unless there's something unusual about this particular table, the
semantics of the table element is all the necessary "alt text". Say you
have a set of key > value pairs, describing a frozen dessert:

type > ice cream
flavor > vanilla
additions > chocolate chips

You could present this data as a very small table with a single row of
headers and a single row of data. The semantics of the table would inform a
user of assistive technology that the data was tabular, and that they could
then leverage any table-specific navigational scheme that their particular
software and/or device offered (for instance screen reader keyboard
shortcuts). The only other element that could qualify as "alt" is the
caption, but if an author is confident that a sighted user will understand
the nature of the table in context, I'm not sure that an assistive
technology-only caption is necessary.

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*Brian Lovely*
Capital One Digital Accessibility
804.389.1064




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