ULEARN Accessibility Guide Table Headers Are Missing

The DOCX file has at least one table without a table header.

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User Experience

What You May Experience

Planetary Characteristics
	Mass ( $10^{24}$ kg)	Diameter (km)	Mean Temp. (C)	Number of Moons
Mercury	0.330	4879	167	0
Venus	4.87	12,104	464	0
Earth	5.97	12,756	15	1
Mars	0.642	6792	-65	2
Jupiter	1898	142,984	-110	95
Saturn	568	120,536	-140	146
Uranus	86.8	51,118	-195	28
Neptune	102	49,528	-200	16

What Students May Experience

Transcript

Why this Matters

Screen readers and other assistive technologies rely on table headers to provide context for navigating and understanding data by associating each cell with its corresponding column or row header. Without table headers in a data table, there's no clear structure, causing screen readers to hear a list of confounding values.

Headers also provide sighted users with an emphasized style that their eyes and brains easily recognize and relate to data as they browse a table's columns and rows.

In the example above, the screen reader reads each cell without conveying its header, making it challenging for students to understand what the numbers are referring to. This lack of clarity can impede learning, especially in tables that contain complex data or require precise interpretation, but also in an element that may seem simple to a sighted user, such as a course schedule in a syllabus.

Hear the difference headers can make!

In the following example, column and row headers have been added. A screen reader is therefore able to convey the relationship between headers and data cells, ensuring that students can understand the information.

The table below is more accessible than the previous example because it includes headers and no longer has a blank upper-left cell. Since screen readers encounter this cell first, it’s essential that it contains descriptive text.

Planetary Characteristics
Planet	Mass $10^{24}$ kg	Diameter (km)	Mean Temp. (C)	Number of Moons
Mercury	0.330	4879	167	0
Venus	4.87	12,104	464	0
Earth	5.97	12,756	15	1
Mars	0.642	6792	-65	2
Jupiter	1898	142,984	-110	95
Saturn	568	120,536	-140	146
Uranus	86.8	51,118	-195	28
Neptune	102	49,528	-200	16

Transcript

How to Fix It

Fix in UDOIT: In the “Review Course Files” area of UDOIT, locate the file missing a Title element and select it, then download it. Open the document in Microsoft Word and use the Accessibility CheckerLinks to an external site. to add headers to tables. Return to UDOIT to replace the file with the updated, accessible version.

Last Updated: Oct 24, 2025, 6:13 PM

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User Experience

What You May Experience

What Students May Experience

Audio Transcript

Why this Matters

Accessible Table with Headers

How to Fix It