This is an essay on the Accessibility section of the Manual of Style. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article or a Wikipedia policy, as it has not been reviewed by the community.

WP:Accessibility contains some good advice, but as with all of Wikipedia, it is a work in progress, and capable of improvement. The section Tables suggests ways in which tables can be improved, but I feel it could go further. I'll try to collect some thoughts here. For anyone who would like to hear what Wikipedia articles sound like to visually impaired readers, the Opera browser is free and has a built-in screen reader that merely needs to be enabled. For those like me who use Firefox routinely, there is an add-on called CLC-Firevox that I've used successfully. It can be quite an eye-opener to hear how some of our articles sound.

From an accessibility point of view, the main problem with rowspans is that folks who have limited vision (but are not blind) often highlight a line of text, and use their screen-reader to read it out to them. Here's part of a wikitable from Zachary Bennett:^oldid

And here's what those six films sound like using Opera's built-in screen reader:

So, what piece of information goes with what in the audio? When you're tempted to use tables with rowspans, please consider what it sounds like to our visually impaired readers. --RexxS 22:48, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Screen readers generally output web content linearly, although most modern readers allow directional navigation – which is the reason why tables need sensible column and row headers, as a reader can usually be configured to read these out before each cell.

Tables are also rendered linearly by text-only web browsers like Lynx. The Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) has accessibility guidelines, derived from WCAG and from their own experience with blind and partially sighted users. Checkpoint 13 from "WAC See It Right standard" (page 25) is titled "Do not use tables for layout unless the table makes sense when linearized". RNIB recommends testing with Lynx to check linearised page output.

Here's a screenshot from Zachary Bennett^oldid using Lynx:

You may have to view the full-sized image to make it out clearly.

Now, here are the two questions:

1. What is the full information for the 1999 film Bonanno: A Godfather's Story?
2. What is the full information for the 1999 film 2 Little, 2 Late?

You'll need Year, Title, Role, and Notes for each one. Now check your answers with the table here. Did you get all of the info right? No – thought not. It's not your fault (unless you wrote the table). There's no way a text browser can tell the difference between a spanned row and an empty cell.

When you're tempted to use tables with rowspans, please consider what it looks like to our readers using text-only browsers. --RexxS (talk) 01:29, 25 August 2010 (UTC)