Support » Plugin: TablePress - Tables in WordPress made easy » Section 508 Table Compliance with Scope and Caption

  • Resolved Joe Banks

    (@joenasagrc)


    I’ve searched through the previous posts on the topics of the table attribute “scope” (specifically “column”) and element “caption,” but I wanted to re-emphasize them here in context of Section 508 and respectfully request their inclusion in the main plugin or perhaps an extension referenced on the TablePress site.

    The caption <caption> element is not required, but due to how frequently we use it, I might recommend adding a checkbox/selection to make the TablePress title or description the caption. (This would be a caption element without any styling or heading (e.g., h2).)

    Scope is the simplest way to make a table Section 508 compliant; in your plugin’s case, only the scope=”column” would need to be added (even as part of the plugin itself, as this would add value to all users). But being able to scope=”row” for the first column of fields would be something NASA agency-wide we would also use often, perhaps adding it to the TablePress first_column_th=true attribute/value.

    WebAIM Reference:

    1. Caption
    2. Scope in TH

    Thanks in advance.

    Update: Perhaps this should be a request made at DataTables.net ?

    https://wordpress.org/plugins/tablepress/

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • Plugin Author TobiasBg

    (@tobiasbg)

    Hi Joe,

    thanks for your post, and sorry for the trouble.

    Those changes sound reasonable. Thanks for the recommendation!
    I’m not that experienced with accessibility/Section 508 here, but this should be possible, at least with an Extension.
    I’ll try to look into it tonight and then post here again, asap!

    Regards,
    Tobias

    Plugin Author TobiasBg

    (@tobiasbg)

    Hi,

    just a quick update here:
    I did some research and adding the caption and the scope="col" should not be a problem, as there are filter hooks available that can be used for that. (I’m not sure though if a checkbox for enabling this makes sense. I’ll either do this as the default or as a TablePress Extension.)
    The scope="row" for first_column_th=true is not yet possible directly, but that should be solvable.

    Regards,
    Tobias

    Thread Starter Joe Banks

    (@joenasagrc)

    Tobias, thank you and always appreciative of your hard work.

    Plugin Author TobiasBg

    (@tobiasbg)

    Hi,

    sure, you are very welcome!
    I do have an idea on how to implement this now, but the actual coding will still take some time. I’ve been terribly busy at work in the last weeks. :-/

    Best wishes,
    Tobias

    Thread Starter Joe Banks

    (@joenasagrc)

    Tobias,

    I call to your attention the post on datatables.net about captions. You may have already seen it.

    Table captions
    http://datatables.net/blog/2014-11-07

    Perhaps if it already exists in Datables, it may be less work than you thought. Or if not, I will work to get someone here to investigate further.

    Plugin Author TobiasBg

    (@tobiasbg)

    Hi Joe,

    thanks for that link! I had already seen that that posts exists, but I haven’t had time to read it and to check if and how this can be used in TablePress.

    The topic of 508 compliance has moved higher on my “To do” list, but unfortunately, I’m still very busy :-/

    Regards,
    Tobias

    Plugin Author TobiasBg

    (@tobiasbg)

    Hi,

    ok, I finally had some time to read that article, which nicely summarizes how the <caption> tag works. So thanks for sharing the link!

    Good news: I’ve developed a small TablePress Extension that prints the name of a table in an HTML <caption> element.
    To use that, you’ll just have to download, install, and activate the Extension from http://tablepress.org/extensions/table-caption-html-tag/ as a regular WordPress plugin.

    Regards,
    Tobias

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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