Understanding Accessibility

Guideline 5. Create tables that transform gracefully.

Checkpoint 5.6 - Provide abbreviations for header labels.

Long labels, when being read out continuously by screen readers, can take up quite a lot of time, so abbreviations are useful.

How do I do it?

Labels more than two words long should have a one or two word abbreviation, which the screen reader can substitute in its place. Use the abbr attribute inside the <TH> tags to give a short explanation of long table headers.

<th abbr="Atkins Food">Food types you may consider when on Atkins</th>
<th abbr="Glycemic Value">Foods glycemic value compared to that of glucose</th>

How do I check that it meets the WCAG criteria?

Pages can be scanned for <th> tags using Dreamweaver’s or Notepad's Edit > Find command. Pages with data tables which have headers which have three or more words, and which do not have an associated abbreviation attribute will fail the check.

Related Links:

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