Accessible Tables

Information in Tables

Tables are useful for presenting information with greater or specific control over how that data is arranged.  Professors use tables to specifically represent data that is best understood in tabular form: Spreadsheets, X-Y organization, and so on.  Less obvious, but no less common, faculty will use tables to represent data in more aesthetically pleasing or efficient ways.  A common example is the header information at the top of a course syllabus: course name, date, time, and professor name, office, office hours, contact information, and so on.  This latter example is what we might call a "layout table." 

Course content can contain data tables; they are vital in many disciplines, and those using screen readers typically have the tools and experience to handle them.  There are ways to optimize your tables for accessibility, but in general, if students know to expect them, they can be prepared.  

However, we generally don't recommend using tables just for cosmetic purposes on D2L web pages or course documents, such as syllabi or assignment instructions.  Tables can be coded in HTML so that they do not provide students a lot of additional information (cell, row, and column names), but that is not the default in most text editors, and most college faculty will not dig into HTML encoding for course content.  Therefore the simplest plan is to avoid tables where they are not specifically necessary to represent information.  

The video below offers a audio example of a screen reader handling different kinds of tabular data.  Viewing this, you can see both how students might successfully use a screen reader to understand tabular data, as well as finding discretionary or aesthetic use of tables by the professor to be frustrating.