Tables without structural markup to differentiate and properly link between header and data cells, create accessibility barriers. Instead, a best practice is to use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for visual presentation. As a general rule, tables aren’t meant to be used for layout purposes. This tutorial does not apply to tables used for layout. This tutorial provides guidance for creating tables used to display data in a grid.
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Many web authoring tools and content management systems (CMS) provide functions to define header cells during table creation without having to edit the code manually. Tables markup is often lost when converting from one format to another, though some programs may provide functionality to assist converting table markup. Word processing applications may also provide mechanisms to markup tables. Some document formats other than HTML, such as PDF, provide similar mechanisms to markup table structures.
A summary provides orientation or navigation hints in complex tables. Tables with multi-level headers have multiple header cells associated per data cell: For tables that are so complex that header cells can’t be associated in a strictly horizontal or vertical way, use id and headers attributes to associate header and data cells explicitly.Ĭaption & Summary : A caption identifies the overall topic of a table and is useful in most situations. Tables with irregular headers have header cells that span multiple columns and/or rows: For these tables, define column and row groups and set the range of the header cells using the colgroup and rowgroup values of the scope attribute. Tables with two headers have a simple row header and a simple column header: For tables with unclear header directions, define the direction of each header by setting the scope attribute to col or row. Tables with one header for rows or columns: For tables with content that is easy to distinguish, mark up header cells with and data cells with elements.
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This tutorial shows you how to apply appropriate structural markup to tables. For more complex tables, explicit associations may be needed using scope, id, and headers attributes. Header cells must be marked up with, and data cells with to make tables accessible. Assistive technologies use this information to provide context to users. Accessible tables need HTML markup that indicates header cells and data cells and defines their relationship. Data tables are used to organize data with a logical relationship in grids.