Data tables need column headers. Monolitten, a granite column of humans (each with a head) at Vigelandsanlegget, a sculpture park in Frognerparken in Oslo, Norway. What they probably do not need is a new set of column headers every few rows, particularly not when they change the meaning of the…
The online holiday shopping coupled with my need to make a new invoice template got me looking at a common table structure that is harder to expose to screen readers than it seems at first glance. One I first coded in, checks watch, 1997 when I was an ecommerce developer…
Though JS-free fixed table row and column headers have been possible for quite some time, Safari’s and Chrome’s recent fixes got some people pretty excited. Enough that folks are copying code samples in whole, without always paying attention to necessary considerations. That same excited demo included other CSS properties that…
This post expands on what I covered in my April 2021 post, Sortable Table Columns. You may want to read that first to understand the broader challenges and techniques for making a table sortable by one column at a time. That last statement is what matters here. ARIA 1.1 says…
An accessible sortable table is not necessarily the same as a usable sortable table. Outline: Basics Let The User Know This Thing Has Sorted Screen Reader Announcement Sort Arrows Column Background Column Background via <col> Let The User Know This Thing Sorts SVGs Layout Windows High Contrast Mode Screen Readers…
I have written a bunch about responsive tables. Maybe too much. I keep trying to give developers the information they need to make informed decisions — ARIA attributes, screen reader & browser pairing results, bugs, and so on. I have spread things out over years of posts. I have filed…
Visually and functionally sortable column headers on tables are straightforward (I have a post on that coming soon). However, making them accessible can be a bit frustrating. To clarify, making them accessible to screen readers is frustrating. I wrote the post I promised in the opening: Sortable Table Columns There…
Whether you call them cards, block links, or some other thing, the construct of making an area of content clickable (tappable, Enter-key-able, voice-activatable, etc.) is not new. While hit area size is mostly a usability issue, marketers often want a larger click area around their calls to action (CTAs) to…
Related Under-Engineered Responsive Tables A Responsive Accessible Table Hey, It’s Still OK to Use Tables Keyboard and Overflow
I regularly work on projects with HTML tables that have been pushed to the edge with styles, scripts, and widget features. A common pattern is where rows are hidden until the user opts to show them. Unfortunately, the pattern is often over-complicated with unnecessary script and styles that regularly break…
Many of my clients over the years have relied on fields in tables. Sometimes a checkbox to select a row, sometimes text inputs to update information, sometimes buttons select something. Rarely are they interested in a block of label text above the field, and I cannot disagree with them. The…
Related Other posts in this accidental series: Layout as a Clue to Semantics Display: Contents Is Not a CSS Reset Tables, JSON, CSS, ARIA, RWD, TLAs… Tables, CSS Display Properties, and ARIA A Responsive Accessible Table Hey, It’s Still OK to Use Tables When I presented my talk CSS Display…