There’s a great news segment on web accessibility from the BBC, and available in a video clip. It explains the difficulties of non-accessible web sites pretty well. Check it out:
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In addition to a nice caption tag and summary attribute, you may know that a data table requires table header cells (TH) for the header rows and/or columns, and a scope attribute (see Web Axe episode 3, Data Tables). But what is there is more than one row of headers? This is called a complex table, and a different type of coding should be used.
Download Web Axe Episode 36 (Complex Data Tables)
A complex table:
- can have any number of rows as a set of headers and/or the first column as a set of headers
- can contain data rows in between the header rows
- uses the
idandheadersattributes
Links:
- The headers and ID attributes (WebAIM)
- Identifying rows and column information (W3C WCAG Techniques 5.1.2)
Sample code (modified from WebAIM):
| Name | Age | Birthday | |
|---|---|---|---|
| by birth | Jackie | 5 | April 5 |
| Beth | 8 | January 14 | |
| by marriage | Jenny | 12 | Feb 12 |
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Retail sites fail accessibility test
An article from the BBC “Retail websites fail access test” discusses the lack on web accessibility in the largest retail web sites in the United Kingdom.
It was found that 30 of the UK’s most important retail web sites had significant accessibility issues. Here are some findings:
- Only 3 terms and conditions pages achieved basic accessibility standards
- 23 of the 30 web sites used search and navigational features that would not work without Javascript
- 29 of the 30 web sites do not use shortcut links to enable people to navigate the page without using a mouse
The Swedish Administrative Development Agency has released an updated version of the guidelines for Swedish public sector web sites. The document is used by public organizations when procuring new web sites as well as by developers as an aid in the development process.
A summary of the guidelines in English is due in early 2007. In the meantime, check out these blogs for an overview:
- Guidelines for Swedish public sector websites updated (456 Berea St.)
- New Version of Guidelines for Swedish Public Sector Web Sites (Standards Schmandards)
Jared Smith from WebAIM recently spoke at the Refresh06 conference in Orlando, Florida. The slides for his presentation User-center, Standards-driven Web Accessibility are available in Acrobat and HTML formats. Thanks to Jared for providing.