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Multiple Table Heading Rows with Colspan

for

From: Randy Pearson
Date: Aug 20, 2004 11:12AM


Suppose you have a table that includes these 2 columns:

---------------------------------------------
| | Interstate | Intrastate | |
|Headings|Transmission|Transmission|Headings|
|-------------------------------------------|
| datum | 28.9 | 32.4 | datum |
|-------------------------------------------|
| datum | 31.2 | 38.4 | datum |
---------------------------------------------

Everything is nice and accessible with all ID's, HEADER's, etc. attributes
in place, when the client says that they don't like the look with the word
Transmission repeated twice and would prefer a 2-row heading with a colspan
like so:

---------------------------------------------
| | Transmission | |
| --------------------------- |
|Headings|Interstate |Intrastate |Headings|
---------------------------------------------
| datum | 28.9 | 32.4 | datum |
---------------------------------------------
| datum | 31.2 | 38.4 | datum |
---------------------------------------------

Can this arrangement be made accessible also? For example, if the TH with
"transmission" were given ID="thTrans" and the TH with "interstate" were
given ID="thInter", could the cells in that column be set with
HEADERS="thTrans thInter" such that assistive technology would combine the
test from those two header cells to comprise the label for the data.

Thanks,

-- Randy