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Standard being reported: Section 6: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and Subsection Five: Create Tables That Transform Gracefully

The standard may be accessed here.

Tables, long used as a way to present a clean, attractive layout before the advent of CSS, need to be used with care nowadays. Tables should be used with truly tabular information ("data tables") wherein data is presented, such as the swimming records of a match in a high school. They should not be used for layout--CSS should take care of that. Screen readers have a particularly hard time with any tables if they are not marked properly. Table cells and headers should be marked appropriately so that some user agents can have the appropriate information. For data tables, row and column headers should be identified. More complex data tables should have markup to associate related data cells and header cells (use COL and COLGROUP to group columns, etc). Do not use tables for layout unless it makes sense linearized, as that is how a screen reader will read it. If a table is used for layout (which is a very bad thing), do not use structural markup for visual formatting. Provide summaries for tables and abbreviations for header labels.

This standard can easily be implemented by refraining from using tables to layout a page or produce visual effects that can easily be done with CSS. Tables have their time and place in presenting data, not in creating a visually pleasing site. Using markup to correctly identify all the different attributes of a table is a little extra work for the web designer, but extra work is hardly comparable to the understanding of visually-impaired users that rely on a screen reader or Braille to understand what is on the web. This standard will help websites reach a broader audience.

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