Chris Hoffman’s
Outstanding Elephant
Two Unscopable Tables
Below are two examples of a tables which cannot be marked up properly using HTML scope attributes on the header cells. The first table contains inline sub-headers which have to be referenced with headers attributes.
| Year | Democrat | Rebublican | 3rd Party |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1980 | Carter | Reagan | Anderson |
| 41% | 50.7% | 6.6% | |
| 1984 | Mondale | Reagan | |
| 40.5% | 58.8% | ||
| 1988 | Dukakis | George H.W. Bush | |
| 45.6% | 53.4% | ||
| 1992 | Clinton | George H.W. Bush | Perot |
| 42.9% | 37.1% | 18.8% | |
| 1996 | Clinton | Dole | Perot |
| 49.2% | 40.7% | 8.4% | |
| 2000 | Gore | George W. Bush | Nader |
| 48.4% | 47.9% | 2.7% | |
| 2004 | Kerry | George W. Bush | |
| 48.3% | 50.7% |
The next table uses its arrangement of headers and data cells to convey further information about the guests at a dinner party:
| Dr. Williams | Miss Kennedy | Lady Gunderson | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beef Wellington | Peking Duck | Fettucine Primavera | ||||
| The Mayor | Mahi Mahi | Mahi Mahi | Martha | |||
| Beef Wellington | Fettucine Primavera | Beef Wellington | ||||
| George | Princess Albertina | Captain Stedwick | ||||