Let??™s look at some ways we can improve the visual appearance of
this table. We??™ll begin with some improvements to the markup that
will give us both plenty of hooks for our CSS, and, most importantly,
more clearly indicate the relationships between the data elements.
FIGURE 6.2 The improved markup
makes the meaning of the table
clearer to both sighted users and to
low-vision users who rely on screen
readers.
Talking screen readers have a hard time with tables; without additional
help, they read the heading row ?¬? rst and then the data row
by row, which is not an ideal way for a person with low vision to
hear the information. Just try reading the table information above
aloud to someone so they understand it. You really need to state the
names of the labels before you read each of the data points in the
columns (or rows, depending on how you decide to read it), and
good markup can help a screen reader do just that. Let??™s give our
table markup a semantic tune-up (see Figure 6.2).
Every designer should devour the
work of Edward Tufte, starting with
the dry-sounding but utterly fascinating
book The Visual Display
of Quantitative Information, 2nd
Edition, Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press.
ISBN 0961392142. Essential reading.
STYLIN??™ WITH CSS - CHAPTER 6 178
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