New Zealand Government Web Standards

11.4 Provide summaries for tables

New standards released

New standards were launched in March 2009 and replace the previous version, the New Zealand Government Web Standards 1.0. Note that, in order to ease transition to the new standards, version 1.0 (below) may still be used in web development until 31 September 2009. See Meeting the standards.

The Standard

11.4 Use the "summary" attribute within the <TABLE> element.

Guide to this standard

For complex tables, the "summary" attribute should contain text that helps users of assistive technologies form a mental picture of the structure of the table e.g. by describing the number of rows and columns, significant groups of rows and the column headings.

This standard covers the W3C WAI checkpoint 5.5 for NZ government agencies.

Rationale for this standard

This is predominantly for assistive technologies such as screen and Braille readers, which will be able to inform users of such devices what information is presented in the table and name the table headings.