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Accessible table template
Saturday October 30, 2004
Sometimes you just need a table to get the job done. They are particularly useful to me when I am doing examination statistics for a school website.
It is more than possible to make tables valid XHTML strict and improve accessibility. The scope attribute is perhaps the most useful tool I have come across to date.
Rather than get into a long winded explanation, here is an example and if you want to see how accessible it is, run this page through the WAI HTML table linearizer entry form, this was quite an eye opener for me!
| Subject | Number of Entries | A | B | C | D | E | U |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Biology | 65 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 6 |
| Physics | 65 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 6 |
| Chemistry | 65 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 6 |
| Totals | 65 | 12 | 45 | 86 | 56 | 56 | 56 |
Thanks to Tommy Olsson for help with this one.
Update: Just after I published this note, I found this article on accessible tables via mezzoblue.
