Tables and Assistive Technology: A Screen Reader’s Perspective

Did you know that screen readers utilize specialized navigation and reading keyboard commands for use with tables? For example, screen readers have settings for how Table Headers (column and row titles) are read to us. And tables can be “uniform” or “non-uniform” depending on the use of merged or split cells. These tools can help, but our ability to understand the data in tables is largely dependent on how the table is designed and used in the document. This session demonstrates some of the basic keyboard command navigation and reading techniques you should know for working with assistive technology.

Key Session Takeaways:

• An understanding of how screen readers work in tables
• Basic keyboard navigation and reading commands
• The differences between the JAWS and NVDA screen reader