WAVE and SiteImprove report an empty

  • saztul

    (@saztul)


    4 days, 19 hours ago

    Hi Tobias!

    I’m getting an accessibility warning from both Siteimprove and WAVE on my TablePress tables, but only when Horizontal Scrolling is enabled.

    The warning is:

    SiteImprove: No data cells assigned to table header (WCAG 2.2 SC 1.3.1)

    WAVE: Empty table header, A <th> (table header) contains no text.

    If I disable Horizontal Scrolling, the warnings disappear.

    If it’s a known issue, is there a recommended way to keep Horizontal Scrolling enabled while ensuring the table remains accessible?

    I’m using:

    • TablePress version: 3.3.2
    • WordPress version: 7.0.2


    Thanks for any guidance!

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
  • Plugin Author Tobias Bäthge

    (@tobiasbg)

    3 days, 19 hours ago

    Hi @saztul,

    Thanks for your post and sorry for the trouble!

    Your observation is correct, and this is a known issue, at the moment. The cause for this is how the “Horizontal Scrolling” feature, implemented with the help of an external JavaScript library, is being implemented. It’s basically creating a duplicate of just the table header row, which is then shown as an overlay above the normal header row. This is needed to prevent some edge cases in behavior of different browsers, and to then also enable features like a Sticky Header row.

    From what I have seen so far, tools like those you mention do indeed flag this, but this is not creating actual accessibility issues in practice, as the “original” table (with header and body cells) is still in the page and thus used by screen readers.

    If you really want to get rid of this warning right now, I can only recommend switching to other ways (not Horizontal Scrolling) to make the table responsive on different screen sizes, like those from https://tablepress.org/modules/responsive-tables/

    Best wishes,
    Tobias

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)

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