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2. If you scroll down a marked-up table, the headers at the top of the table appear in the grey ribbon above the worksheet itself.
Name each table
As well as giving each worksheet tab a unique name or number, you should name each individual table when you mark it up. To name a table:
- Click anywhere in a marked-up table.
- Click the ‘Design’ ribbon.
- On the far left of the ribbon, in the ‘Properties’ section, there is a box to edit the table name.
- Type the table name in – note that words must be split up with underscores.
This is because some users with screen readers don't navigate via worksheet tabs but via an index of named tables (bearing in mind that some worksheets might contain numerous tables). They access it by clicking Ctrl + G to open the 'Go to ' tool. All marked-up and named tables will be listed here. Users can select a particular table, click OK and be taken directly to that table.
If you want to see a list of all the tables in your workbook with a view to doing advanced editing of them, go to the ‘Formulas’ ribbon and click ‘Name Manager’, but if you simply want to change the name of a particular table, click on it and repeat the numbered steps given above.
Fixing merged cells and multiple header rows
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- remove colour
- left justify title (making it heading 1) and the sub-title
- write a description sentence
- remove bold except for header row
Example 2.
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Dividing a long
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table with multiple sub-sections and merged cells into lots of smaller tables
Before
A long table with sub headings on the left using merged cells, which is doubly inaccessible. The solution is to divide the one ling table into multiple short tables and use the 'Areas of interest' as the titles for each of the new short tables.
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1. The worksheet doesn't have a title. There's an empty row. The table has two heading rows so is impossible to mark up as table. Important information is left to a footnote below the table. Colour is useful for sighted readers but is not of much value to the colour vision deficient or partially sighted.
2. The worksheet now has a title in A1 in heading 1. Then a description of what is on this worksheet. Then the title of the table. And the important information is now pasted above the table
3. To get rid of the merged cells at the top and reduce the column headers to one row, we can add the years to the 'child' column header rows. This gives just one header row and so allows us to mark this up as a table.
4. Having come this far, why make the reading experience more complicated with abbreviations at all? Why not spell out S, I and R in each column heading? This is a bombproof solution.
And also, finally, remove the colour.
Possibly the percentage symbol could be removed and explained in a description sentence above the table to further reduce clutter. Maybe the sets of year columns could be divided by a thicker cell border for sighted readers.