Maximum Accessibility: Making Your Web Site More Usable for Everyone

The Trouble with Tables

The trouble with tables is that they’re meant for the eye, not the ear. They also make significant cognitive demands. To understand a table, you have to be able to read in two dimensions (horizontal and vertical, x and y) simultaneously, matching up the contents of individual data cells with row and column names that often provide only slender clues about the relationships the data embody.

Web designers aiming for maximum accessibility have to understand and address these challenges. People who rely on screen readers and talking browsers—including both people who are blind or visually impaired and people with cognitive difficulties such as dyslexia— have to hold row and column headers in their minds as the screen reader ...