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Tablin: an HTML Table linearizer

HTML Tables, whether used for layout or for real data, can create problems for people reading the Web line-by-line (e.g. columned text read across the page out of order: reading sentences on the same row from different columns as one sentence).

This usually happens when there is a mismatch between the rendering engine parsing the Table and the needs of the presentation engine interacting with the end-user.


For example, if a table is rendered like this on the screen by a mainstream browser:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is a 30% chance of          |    Classes at the University of Nice 
rain this morning, but it         |    will resume on September 3rd. 
should stop before the weekend.   |
------------------------------------------------------------------------

It might be presented by a screen reader as:

There is a 30% chance of Classes at the University of Nice
rain this morning, but it will resume on September 3rd. 
should stop before the weekend.

Tablin is a filter program developed by the WAI Evaluation & Repair (ER) group that can linearize HTML tables and render them accordingly to preferences set by the presentation layer (e.g. the screen reader end-user). It is available in different forms:

Please send comments on the tools and these page to the WAI ER Interest Group mailing list.

Enjoy!


Daniel Dardailler
dd@w3.org
Last updated: Sep 7 2000.

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