Data or header cells must not be used to give caption to a data table.

Markup for data tables can be tedious and perplexing. There are several capabilities in screen readers that make it easier to navigate tables, but for these features to function properly, tables must be precisely marked up. Instead than utilizing a caption element, some tables visually imply a caption by employing cells with the colspan element.

Tables are announced in a certain way by screen readers. The potential for unclear or erroneous screen reader output exists when tables are not properly marked up.

Screen reader users cannot understand the purpose of the table visually when tables are not marked up with an actual caption element but rather use a colspan element on cells to visually indicate a caption.

What this Accessibility Rule Checks

Verifies that data tables are identified with table cells that utilize a colspan element to visually convey a caption.

Learn more:

Deque Reference

Deque University - How To Fix

→

W3C Reference

WCAG 2.1 - Using caption elements to associate data table captions with data tables

→

W3C Reference

WCAG 2.1 - Using id and headers attributes to associate data cells with header cells in data tables

→

W3C Reference

WCAG 2.1 - https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Techniques/html/H51.html

→

W3C Reference

WCAG 2.1 - Using the scope attribute to associate header cells and data cells in data tables

→

W3C Reference

WCAG 2.1 - Using the summary attribute of the table element to give an overview of data tables

→