3.3 Making Accessible Tables

For a table to be accessible, we must clarify if any rows are headers using \lxBeginTableHead{} and \lxEndTableHead{}. This way, the screen reader will read the name of the column aloud, rather than just the column number.

Header 1 Header 2 Header 3
Content Content Content
More content content content
Figure 3.5: A table

Here, we used the following LaTeX:

\begin{figure}[H]
    \begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{||c||X||c||}
        \hline
        \lxBeginTableHead{} Header 1 & Header 2 & Header 3 \\
        \hline \lxEndTableHead{}
        Content & Content & Content \\
        More content & content & content \\
        \hline
    \end{tabularx}
    \caption{A table}
\end{figure}

If your table concludes with a footer (i.e. cells at the bottom of the table which communicate something different from the table contents), it is best practice to mark this as a footer.

    \lxBeginTableFoot{} Footer \lxEndTableFoot{}

Similarly, we can mark individual cells as headers for their respective rows using the following LaTeX commands

\lxTableColumnHead{}
\lxTableRowHead{}