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Re: IBM Home Page Reader

for

From: Paul Bohman
Date: Oct 16, 2001 8:30PM

Yes, JAWS and HPR associate the id and headers attributes of the TH and TD
cells. HPR also supports the "scope" attributes of the TH cells.
JAWS does not seem to support the scope attribute, but this may not be a
problem with most tables, because JAWS makes a guess and reads the first
cell at the top of the column (when in table reading mode) as if it did have
the scope attribute marked up. Complex tables may not be read correctly by
JAWS unless you use the headers attribute. For simple tables, though, the
scope attribute will suffice, in my opinion.
HPR supports the abbr within header cells. For example, if you have a header
cell with a long heading (e.g. "Husbands or Wives of past university
presidents"), you could abbreviate it like this: abbr="spouses". This makes
it less tiresome to listen to over and over again. JAWS does not support the
abbr within header cells. I would still go ahead and use abbr where
appropriate, though. It will benefit HPR users and someday (hopefully) it
will benefit JAWS users as well.
If you don't use either the "headers" or "scope" attributes, the tables may
not be read correctly.
Here is an example of a table with scope attributes and abbr attributes
(several lines of html follow):
<table width="80%" border="1" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="6">
<caption>Staff Directory for Pretend Company</caption>
<!-- TABLE HEADERS -->
<tr>
<td></td>
<th scope="col" abbr="Title">Job Title</th>
<th scope="col" abbr="Room">Room Number</th>
<th scope="col">Building</th>
<th scope="col" abbr="Phone">Phone Number</th>
<th scope="col" abbr="E-mail">E-mail Address</th>
</tr>
<!-- FIRST ROW -->
<tr>
<th scope="row">Gloria Garcia</th>
<td>Web Developer</td>
<td align=center>17</td>
<td>Blue</td>
<td>555-1234</td>
<td> <EMAIL REMOVED> </td>
</tr>
<!-- SECOND ROW -->
<tr>
<th scope="row">Jan Frank</th>
<td>Web Developer</td>
<td align=center>93</td>
<td>Purple</td>
<td>555-7089</td>
<td> <EMAIL REMOVED> </td>
</tr>
<!-- THIRD ROW -->
<tr>
<th scope="row">James Michiko</th>
<td>Web Designer</td>
<td align=center>20</td>
<td>Blue</td>
<td>555-3424</td>
<td> <EMAIL REMOVED> </td>
</tr>
<!-- FOURTH ROW -->
<tr>
<th scope="row"> Rao Mitchell</th>
<td>Web Accessibility Coordinator</td>
<td align=center>45</td>
<td>Blue</td>
<td>555-1243</td>
<td> <EMAIL REMOVED> </td>
</tr>
<!-- FIFTH PERSON -->
<tr>
<th scope="row">Marama Smith</th>
<td>Web Manager</td>
<td align=center>230</td>
<td>Green</td>
<td>555-7389</td>
<td> <EMAIL REMOVED> </td>
</tr>


Paul Bohman
Technology Coordinator
WebAIM (Web Accessibility in Mind)
www.webaim.org
Utah State University
www.usu.edu

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