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Accessible Table question

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From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Oct 13, 2005 12:00PM

I'm producing HTML for a designer and came across a table that I'm not
entirely sure how to optimize for accessibility:

http://www.darrelaustin.com/clients/enza/essen_store.html

There's a row across the top for the column headers, which is easy
enough.

The qusestion is regarding the CATEGORY column. I could give each and
every row a category field (which, to me, seems most accessible) but
they're prefer the visual to look as is, where only the first item that
lists the category.

How would you build this?

Some ideas I had:

1)

------------------------
Category | item | detail
---------------
| item | detail
---------------
| item | detail
------------------------

Make the first TD a TD with a rowspan of 3 and a scope of ROW



2)

------------------------
Category | item | detail
------------------------
Category | item | detail
------------------------
Category | item | detail
------------------------

Put the category in each row as a TD, but visually style the subsequent
items so they do not appear visually.



3)

------------------------
Category | item | detail
------------------------
| item | detail
------------------------
| item | detail
------------------------

Give the category TH an axis of 'category'. This is where I get a bit
confused, though, as I'm not sure how axis actually works. And perhaps I
also need a rowgroup here as well?

-Darrel