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Headers attribute specified on a cell refers to cells in the same table element

Description

This rule checks that the headers attribute on a cell refer to other cells in the same table element.

Applicability

This rule applies to any headers attribute specified on a cell within a table element, where all of the following is true for the table element:

Expectation 1

Each target’s attribute value is a set of space separated tokens. Each token is the value of the id attribute of an element, that is a cell of the same table.

Expectation 2

Each target’s attribute value is a set of space separated tokens, and none of these tokens is the id of the element on which the test target is specified.

Assumptions

Accessibility Support

There are no accessibility support issues known.

Background

Bibliography

Accessibility Requirements Mapping

Input Aspects

The following aspects are required in using this rule.

Test Cases

Passed

Passed Example 1

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The headers attribute on the data cells refers to a th element within the same table.

<table>
	<thead>
		<tr>
			<th id="header1">Projects</th>
			<th id="header2">Objective</th>
		</tr>
	</thead>
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td headers="header1">15%</td>
			<td headers="header2">10%</td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>

Passed Example 2

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The headers attribute on the cell refers to a th element within the same table. Multiple headers are referenced for a cell with colspan of 2.

<table>
	<thead>
		<tr>
			<th id="header1">Projects</th>
			<th id="header2">Exams</th>
		</tr>
	</thead>
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td colspan="2" headers="header1 header2">15%</td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>

Passed Example 3

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The headers attribute on the data cells in the second row refers to a td element with a role of columnheader within the same table.

<table>
	<thead>
		<tr>
			<td role="columnheader" id="header1">Projects</td>
			<td role="columnheader" id="header2">Objective</td>
		</tr>
	</thead>
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td headers="header1">15%</td>
			<td headers="header2">10%</td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>

Passed Example 4

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This table has multiple elements with a role of columnheader. The headers attribute on the cells lists IDs of th elements within the same table.

<table>
	<tr>
		<th colspan="2" id="header1">Projects</th>
		<th colspan="2" id="header2">Exams</th>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<th id="e1" headers="header1">1</th>
		<th id="e2" headers="header1">2</th>
		<th id="p1" headers="header2">1</th>
		<th id="p2" headers="header2">2</th>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td colspan="2" headers="header1 e1 e2">15%</td>
		<td headers="header2 p1">15%</td>
		<td headers="header2 p2">45%</td>
	</tr>
</table>

Passed Example 5

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The headers attribute on the second data cell in each row refers to a th element with a role of rowheader within the same table.

<table>
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<th role="rowheader" id="headerAge">Age</th>
			<td headers="headerAge">65</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<th role="rowheader" id="headerObjective">Objective</th>
			<td headers="headerObjective">40%</td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>

Passed Example 6

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The headers attribute on the last two th elements refers to another th element within the same table. Here the column header has a span of two columns.

<table>
	<tr>
		<th id="name" colspan="2">Name</th>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<th headers="name">Firstname</th>
		<th headers="name">Lastname</th>
	</tr>
</table>

Passed Example 7

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The headers attribute on the cells refers to th elements which are row scoped & within the same table.

<table>
	<tr>
		<th id="projects1" scope="row">Projects</th>
		<th id="progress1" scope="row">Progress</th>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td headers="projects1">My Project</td>
		<td headers="progress1">15%</td>
	</tr>
</table>

Passed Example 8

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The headers attribute on the cell refers to th element which is not the same column as the cell.

<table>
	<tr>
		<td></td>
		<th id="projects2">Projects</th>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td headers="projects2">15%</td>
		<td></td>
	</tr>
</table>

Failed

Failed Example 1

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The td elements have a headers attribute referring to an ID that does not exist within the same table. Here the referenced ID is incorrect.

<table>
	<tr>
		<th id="headerOfColumn1">Projects</th>
		<th id="headerOfColumn2">Objective</th>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td headers="headOfColumn1">15%</td>
		<td headers="headOfColumn2">10%</td>
	</tr>
</table>

Failed Example 2

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The td elements have a headers attribute referring to an ID that exist in a separate table.

<table>
	<tr>
		<th id="headOfColumn1">Projects</th>
		<th id="headOfColumn2">Objective</th>
	</tr>
</table>

<table>
	<tr>
		<td headers="headOfColumn1">15%</td>
		<td headers="headOfColumn2">10%</td>
	</tr>
</table>

Failed Example 3

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The td element has a headers attribute referring to its own ID.

<table>
	<tr>
		<th>Event Type</th>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td id="headerBday" headers="headerBday">
			Birthday
		</td>
	</tr>
</table>

Failed Example 4

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The headers attribute on the data cells in the second row refers to an element inside the same table which does not have a role of rowheader or columnheader.

<table>
	<tr>
		<td>
			<span id="headerProject">Projects</span>
		</td>
		<td>
			<span id="headerObjective">Objective</span>
		</td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td headers="headerProject">
			15%
		</td>
		<td headers="headerObjective">
			10%
		</td>
	</tr>
</table>

Inapplicable

Inapplicable Example 1

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There is no headers attribute.

<table>
	<tr>
		<th scope="col">Projects</th>
		<th scope="col">Exams</th>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td>15%</td>
		<td>45%</td>
	</tr>
</table>

Inapplicable Example 2

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The table has a role="presentation" and thus is not included in the accessibility tree.

<table role="presentation">
	<tr>
		<td id="header1">Project Status</td>
		<td id="header2">Objective</td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td headers="header1">15%</td>
		<td headers="header2">10%</td>
	</tr>
</table>

Inapplicable Example 3

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The table is not visible in page.

<html>
	<style>
		.notInPage {
			position: absolute;
			left: -9999px;
			top: -9999px;
		}
	</style>
	<table class="notInPage">
		<tr>
			<th id="header1">Project Status</th>
			<th id="header2">Objective</th>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td headers="header1">15%</td>
			<td headers="header2">10%</td>
		</tr>
	</table>
</html>

Inapplicable Example 4

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The rule applies only to headers attribute within a table element.

<div role="table">
	<div role="row">
		<div role="columnheader" id="header1">Projects</div>
		<div role="columnheader" id="header2">Exams</div>
	</div>
	<div role="row">
		<div role="cell" headers="header2">15%</div>
		<div role="cell" headers="header1">15%</div>
	</div>
</div>

Inapplicable Example 5

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The table is not included in the accessibility tree.

<table style="display:none;">
	<tr>
		<td id="header1">Project Status</td>
		<td id="header2">Objective</td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td headers="header1">15%</td>
		<td headers="header2">10%</td>
	</tr>
</table>

Inapplicable Example 6

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This table doesn’t have a role of table, grid or treegrid.

<table role="region">
	<td id="self" headers="self">World</td>
</table>

Glossary

Attribute value

The attribute value of a content attribute set on an HTML element is the value that the attribute gets after being parsed and computed according to specifications. It may differ from the value that is actually written in the HTML code due to trimming whitespace or non-digits characters, default values, or case-insensitivity.

Some notable case of attribute value, among others:

This list is not exhaustive, and only serves as an illustration for some of the most common cases.

The attribute value of an IDL attribute is the value returned on getting it. Note that when an IDL attribute reflects a content attribute, they have the same attribute value.

Explicit Semantic Role

The explicit semantic role of an element is determined by its role attribute (if any).

The role attribute takes a list of tokens. The explicit semantic role is the first valid role in this list. The valid roles are all non-abstract roles from WAI-ARIA Specifications. If the element has no role attribute, or if it has one with no valid role, then this element has no explicit semantic role.

Other roles may be added as they become available. Not all roles will be supported in all assistive technologies. Testers are encouraged to adjust which roles are allowed according to the accessibility support base line. For the purposes of executing test cases in all rules, it should be assumed that all roles are supported by assistive technologies so that none of the roles fail due to lack of accessibility support.

Focusable

An element is focusable if one or both of the following are true:

Exception: Elements that lose focus during a period of up to 1 second after gaining focus, without the user interacting with the page the element is on, are not considered focusable.

Notes:

Implicit Semantic Role

The implicit semantic role of an element is a pre-defined value given by the host language which depends on the element and its ancestors.

Implicit roles for HTML and SVG, are documented in the HTML accessibility API mappings (working draft) and the SVG accessibility API mappings (working draft).

Included in the accessibility tree

Elements included in the accessibility tree of platform specific accessibility APIs are exposed to assistive technologies. This allows users of assistive technology to access the elements in a way that meets the requirements of the individual user.

The general rules for when elements are included in the accessibility tree are defined in the core accessibility API mappings. For native markup languages, such as HTML and SVG, additional rules for when elements are included in the accessibility tree can be found in the HTML accessibility API mappings (working draft) and the SVG accessibility API mappings (working draft).

For more details, see examples of included in the accessibility tree.

Programmatically hidden elements are removed from the accessibility tree. However, some browsers will leave focusable elements with an aria-hidden attribute set to true in the accessibility tree. Because they are hidden, these elements are considered not included in the accessibility tree. This may cause confusion for users of assistive technologies because they may still be able to interact with these focusable elements using sequential keyboard navigation, even though the element should not be included in the accessibility tree.

Marked as decorative

An element is marked as decorative if one or more of the following conditions is true:

Elements are marked as decorative as a way to convey the intention of the author that they are pure decoration. It is different from the element actually being pure decoration as authors may make mistakes. It is different from the element being effectively ignored by assistive technologies as rules such as presentational roles conflict resolution may overwrite this intention.

Elements can also be ignored by assistive technologies if they are programmatically hidden. This is different from marking the element as decorative and does not convey the same intention. Notably, being programmatically hidden may change as users interact with the page (showing and hiding elements) while being marked as decorative should stay the same through all states of the page.

Outcome

An outcome is a conclusion that comes from evaluating an ACT Rule on a test subject or one of its constituent test target. An outcome can be one of the three following types:

Note: A rule has one passed or failed outcome for every test target. When there are no test targets the rule has one inapplicable outcome. This means that each test subject will have one or more outcomes.

Note: Implementations using the EARL10-Schema can express the outcome with the outcome property. In addition to passed, failed and inapplicable, EARL 1.0 also defined an incomplete outcome. While this cannot be the outcome of an ACT Rule when applied in its entirety, it often happens that rules are only partially evaluated. For example, when applicability was automated, but the expectations have to be evaluated manually. Such “interim” results can be expressed with the incomplete outcome.

Programmatically Hidden

An HTML element is programmatically hidden if either it has a computed CSS property visibility whose value is not visible; or at least one of the following is true for any of its inclusive ancestors in the flat tree:

Note: Contrary to the other conditions, the visibility CSS property may be reverted by descendants.

Note: The HTML standard suggests setting the CSS display property to none for elements with the hidden attribute. While not required by HTML, all modern browsers follow this suggestion. Because of this the hidden attribute is not used in this definition. In browsers that use this suggestion, overriding the CSS display property can reveal elements with the hidden attribute.

Semantic Role

The semantic role of an element is determined by the first of these cases that applies:

  1. Conflict If the element is marked as decorative, but the element is included in the accessibility tree; or would be included in the accessibility tree when it is not programmatically hidden, then its semantic role is its implicit role.
  2. Explicit If the element has an explicit role, then its semantic role is its explicit role.
  3. Implicit The semantic role of the element is its implicit role.

This definition can be used in expressions such as “semantic button” meaning any element with a semantic role of button.

Visible

Content perceivable through sight.

Content is considered visible if making it fully transparent would result in a difference in the pixels rendered for any part of the document that is currently within the viewport or can be brought into the viewport via scrolling.

Content is defined in WCAG.

For more details, see examples of visible.

WAI-ARIA specifications

The WAI ARIA Specifications group both the WAI ARIA W3C Recommendation and ARIA modules, namely:

Note: depending on the type of content being evaluated, part of the specifications might be irrelevant and should be ignored.

Rule Versions

  1. Latest version, 31 August 2023 (compare)
    • Update applicability to account for tables with a role attribute
  2. Previous version, 23 June 2022

Implementations

This section is not part of the official rule. It is populated dynamically and not accounted for in the change history or the last modified date.

Implementation Type Consistency Report
Alfa (fully automated) 0.80.0 Automated tool Consistent Alfa (fully automated) Report
Alfa (semi-automated) 0.80.0 Semi-automated tool Consistent Alfa (semi-automated) Report
Axe DevTools Pro 4.37.1 Semi-automated tool Consistent Axe DevTools Pro Report
Axe-core 4.8.3 Automated tool Consistent Axe-core Report
Equal Access Accessibility Checker 3.1.42-rc.0 Automated tool Consistent Equal Access Accessibility Checker Report
QualWeb 3.0.0 Automated tool Consistent QualWeb Report
SortSite 6.45 Automated tool Consistent SortSite Report
Total Validator 17.4.0 Linter Consistent Total Validator Report
Total Validator (+Browser) 17.4.0 Automated tool Consistent Total Validator (+Browser) Report
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This is an unpublished draft preview that might include content that is not yet approved. The published website is at w3.org/WAI/.