WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Table cells with subheadings

for

From: Dolenko, Kristen
Date: May 26, 2023 8:19AM

Thank you Patrick and Glen -
I'm hearing that it's technically valid (almost) but that the better approach, to make it more understandable, would be to use CSS.

Kristen Dolenko
mobile: 1-343-551-2896

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of glen walker
Sent: May 26, 2023 9:59 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Table cells with subheadings

***ATTENTION***

This email originated from outside of the Government of Canada.
Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and believe the content is safe.
To learn more about suspicious emails and how to report them: Handling SPAM or junk emails<https://que-lse-esl.isvcs.net/que/2715/articleEdit.do?method=viewArticle&id72>.


Ce courriel provient de l’extérieur du Gouvernement du Canada.
Ne cliquez pas sur le lien ni les pièces jointes sauf si vous reconnaissez l’expéditeur et que vous croyez que le contenu est sûr.
Pour en savoir plus sur les courriels suspects et comment les signaler: Comment traiter les courriels indésirables<https://que-lse-esl.isvcs.net/que/2715/articleEdit.do?method=viewArticle&id72>.


The example page seems pretty straight forward. It's almost coded correctly, in my opinion. There are multiple tables on the page with each table preceded by an H3 heading, kind of like a <caption>, so it's easy to find each table along with it's description.

Inside of the cells, there visually appears to be headings but they are just paragraph tags, <p>, with a classname of "h4" or "h5". Someone went to the trouble of naming the CSS classes as if they were heading elements but didn't actually use heading elements. Real <h4> and <h5> should be used.

Once you have real headings in the cells, if you navigate by heading ('H'
key with NVDA/JAWS or using the rotor on iOS), it's difficult to tell when you hear a heading in a new cell. However, if you navigate the table cell by cell (ctrl+alt+arrowkey), you hear the column header and then all the cell contents, including each heading (which is sometimes a lot).

So it's possible to navigate and hear the structure in the cell, if you use real headings in the cells. Is it easy to understand? That's a difficult question to answer without real usability tests.