Journal
Scoping Things Out
27 September 2006 › 4 comments
This post will not be terribly long, nor will it be incredibly profound. I just wanted to let people know that I have updated my free calendar templates, both in the weekly and monthly categories. After reading the recent book on Web Accessibility, I rediscovered a little used tabular attribute called scope. It can have one of two values, depending on its usage and relevance.
It can be used to show that a particular value pertains to either an entire column, or an entire row. I did an example of a 2×2 (column / row) table with appropriate headers for my Gospelcon presentation, to show how tables should be used. Let’s say you have a column named Sunday, then you would do this for it’s header – <th scope="col">Sunday</th>. Likewise, if you had a row which contained data corrosponding to the time 12:30, then you would do this for the first table cell – <td scope="row">12:30</td>.
Anyway, as I have picked up on little semantic nuances that can help improve the accessibility of tabular data, I have been incrimentally improving my past examples. I just thought I would give the heads-up, since people still hit the calendar pages quite a bit via Google search. That is obviously still a point of interest, so I figured others might not have heard about them yet…
Discussion + Dissension
Comments closed after 2 weeks.
#1 Matthew Pennell
I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that the scope attribute either a) doesn’t work, or b) causes problems for certain screenreaders when they encounter a table that uses it.
#2 Nathan Smith
Matthew: Really? In this book, which is fairly recent and seems very well researched, it said that the scope attribute is helpful. I’m not saying you’re wrong, just that it’s the first I have heard of it. I’d be curious to see the source, if you happen to find / remember it.
#3 Andy Knight
I guess I missed it when you first published these calendars, but man, they’re really nice on the eyes!
#4 Nathan Smith
Andy: Thanks, I appreciate that. Feel free to download and repurpose them for use at Fellowship, if you guys find a need for them.