Understanding Accessibility

Guideline 10. Use interim solutions.

Checkpoint 10.3 - Until user agents (including assistive technologies) render side-by-side text correctly, provide a linear text alternative (on the current page or some other) for all tables that lay out text in parallel, word-wrapped columns

Some tables which format text in columns can cause problems for screen readers which read out text from adjacent columns as if they were joined, resulting in a garbled output. Layout tables are checked for linearization in Guideline 5.3. Tables should also have a linear version in the event that some devices cannot handle the linearization process.

How do I do it?

Use the table linearizer at http://www.w3.org/WAI/References/Tablin/ to linearize tables. Then link to these pages when a user may be presented with a table using more than 1 column.

How do I check that it meets the WCAG criteria?

Columnar tables which are used for layout and have no alternative linear version available will fail this check.

Related links:

guideline 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14