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Re: Tables with irregular headers

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From: Jonathan Avila
Date: Apr 15, 2021 12:50PM

From recollection JAWS announces changes in header cells that span multiple columns but won't repeat something that is spanned if it has not changed - perhaps that is the reason.

Jonathan

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From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of glen walker
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 2:27 PM
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Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Tables with irregular headers

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When navigating across row 1, I can sort of see your point.

With NVDA, it only says "Mars" and then "Venus", so it's only announcing just that header.
With JAWS, it says "Produced Mars" and "Produced Venus"

I can (sort of) understand why JAWS is doing that. "Mars" is a cell in the table (a header cell but a cell nonetheless) so JAWS is trying to announce any headers that go with that (header) cell, which is "Produced". Sort of.

Both "Produced" and "Sold" are header cells so why did JAWS only decide to announce "Produced" when navigating to the "Mars" cell and not "Sold"? I can't answer that. Perhaps it's a JAWS-ism.

But I think that might be beside the point. In your real world case, are you trying to control what the screen reader says when you navigate the header cells? I'm not sure you should do that. You said "I would prefer to hear..." but are you a typical screen reader user? You have to be careful when you start thinking about how *you* would want things announced as opposed to what your *users* expect to be announced.