Data Tables

The concept of tabular data is used extensively in computing with things like spreadsheets and databases. However, for a blind person having this information converted to speech, they won’t get the visual reference and will either have to memorise all the references or have them repeated.

Blind people only hear a string of text read from left to right, one row at a time. For assistive software such as screen readers to be able to understand the relationships within the table it is important to use semantic code. So every table heading cell should be marked up with the <th> element and every table data cell use the <td> element. The software can then store these headings in memory and reference them to the relevant data cells <td> within the table.

Without these headings a blind person would have to remember the sequence of column headings and the title of the current row as they moved through the table. This becomes virtually impossible with larger tables.