Tables are quite prevalent in PowerPoint slides; many presentations contain tables to convey data to the viewer. Within the context of on-line education, many presentations use tables to show everything from course grading policies, statistical data, and course schedules.
This page focuses on two elements:
There are two slides in the original sample PowerPoint presentation that contain tables: slide 6 and slide 9. Work with slide 9 first since it is a simpler table, and then focus on slide 6.
From the sample "Human-Computer Interaction" presentation, (see Image 21) is the original PowerPoint slide 9.
Note: This is a simple slide that contains a title and one table. The purpose of this table is to define which letter grades are associated with numeric grades in a course. The table contains two columns and six rows; one row is the "header" row that specifies what each column contains, and the later five rows provide the data of the table.
<!-- Slide 9 -->
<img src="Slide9.jpg" alt="Slide 9">
<H1>Grading Policy</H1>
Most Web page authors are familiar with creating tables using the TABLE tag, but many are not familiar with all of the accessibility guidelines when creating tables. When creating tables, there are two main sections of the table:
Note: There is also a "foot" section, but we are not concerned with this section right now.
In addition to the "head" and "body" sections of the table, an accessible table should also contain:
The basic structure of an accessible HTML table looks like this:
<table border="1" summary="This is a
long
description of the table, providing an overall view of the table for
non-visual readers.">
<caption>
This is the caption of the table
</caption>
<thead>
<tr>
<th scope="col">First Column</th>
<th scope="col">Second Column</th>
<th scope="col">Third Column</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Cell 1</td>
<td>Cell 2</td>
<td>Cell 3</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Cell 4</td>
<td>Cell 5</td>
<td>Cell 6</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Note: The caption is marked with the "caption" tag, the table's head is marked with the "thead" tag, and the table's body is marked with the "tbody" tag. The summary is provided as an attribute of the "table" tag, and specifies a border to separate the cells of the table using the "border" attribute of the "table" tag.
Within the table:
You might have also noticed the "scope" attribute of the TH tags. This is used to "connect" the columns of data to their header. In doing this, non-text readers will be able to effectively navigate through the data and read the table correctly to the user.
Note: The header cells are already highlighted, the caption is displayed atop the table, and all of the data cells are filled in.
<!-- Slide 9 -->
<img src="Slide9.jpg" alt="Slide 9">
<H1>Grading Policy</H1>
<table border="1" summary="This table shows the relationship
between numeric and letter grades for the course.">
<caption>
What grade you'll get for your numeric performance
</caption>
<thead>
<tr>
<th scope="col">Grade</th>
<th scope="col">Score Range</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>A</td>
<td>90+</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>B</td>
<td>80-89</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>C</td>
<td>70-79</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>D</td>
<td>60-69</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>F</td>
<td>0-59</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Note: The caption information is placed above the table, and the header information ("Grade" and "Score Range") are automatically highlighted by the Web browser.
Now that you know how to generate a table, look at slide 6 from the original PowerPoint presentation. It is a table-based slide as well; the only thing that is added to this slide is the hyperlink (see Image 24).
<!-- Slide 6 -->
<img src="Slide6.jpg" alt="Slide 6">
<H1>Instructor Contact Information</H1>
Just because the original PowerPoint slide contains a table does not mean that the accessible HTML slide should contain a table. The above slide (slide 6 in the original PowerPoint presentation) demonstrates a good example of a situation where the material is placed in a table only for organization effects.
There are not good titles for each column because this table is merely providing information, conveying the name, office, phone, etc. of the instructor. Of course, if you had many instructors for the course (as in a "team taught" situation), then perhaps it would be good to keep the table layout; but as this example stands, it would be best to have the accessible HTML version of this slide to not have a table. Separate the information using colons (":"). Still providing all of the necessary information, but will not have to construct the table and provide extraneous headers for the columns.
<!-- Slide 6 -->
<img src="Slide6.jpg" alt="Slide 6">
<H1>Instructor Contact Information</H1>
<p>Name: Jon A. Preston</p>
<p>Office: T-109</p>
<p>Office Hours: Tues & Thurs, 3-6pm</p>
<p>Phone: 770 960 4354</p>
<p>E-mail:
<a href="mailto:jonpreston@mail.clayton.edu">jonpreston@mail.clayton.edu</a>
</p>
Each of the rows in the table has been made into paragraphs. This still conveys the important information but without the unnecessary table.
Note: The hyperlink is created using the "A" tag in HTML. In this case, the hypertext reference is a "mailto" which tells the Web browser that if the user selects this link that the browser should allow the user to send an e-mail message to the intended recipient (in this case, "jonpreston@mail.clayton.edu").
For a complete, detailed discussion and guidelines for making more complex
tables accessible, point your Web browser to
http://www.usability.com.au/resources/tables.cfm
.
The next page will discuss how to convert slides with images.