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Thread: Multiple Table Heading Rows with Colspan

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From: Randy Pearson
Date: Fri, Aug 20 2004 11:12AM
Subject: Multiple Table Heading Rows with Colspan
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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

From: julian.rickards@ndm.gov.on.ca
Date: Fri, Aug 20 2004 11:23AM
Subject: Re: Multiple Table Heading Rows with Colspan
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What I have learned is that your first example does not need id/headers (for
accessibility purposes, you may need ids for CSS), is sufficient (scope
doesn't hurt). However, when you have multiple headings in the same
direction (columns or rows or both), then you need ids and headers.

-----------------------------------------------
Julian Rickards

-----Original Message-----
From: randyp [mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ]

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?