H63 Invalid Scope Attribute Failure

Header A Header B
Header 1 Cell 1B

Explanation

According to Success Criterion 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships), the relationship between table headings and table data (ie. th and td elements) must be programmatically determinable. This can be done using either the "scope" attribute on th elements, or "headers" attributes on td elements - depending on the number and type of headings.

Whether this example is an issue depends on which standard you are writing to. In HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0, this is legal code, and can be safely ignored unless and until rewritten in HTML5. In HTML5, however, td elements are written not to be headers, and thus the scope attribute is obsolete on td elements: "Use the scope attribute on a th element instead".

Some country-level requirements for accessibility conformance state that a specification be used without its deprecated or obsolete parts, as part of their conformance specifications. Therefore, this warning ensures authors using the HTML5 standard know that this is not proper usage of the scope attribute, and thus could not claim conformance to their guidelines.

Expected Warnings

Relevant Success Criteria

Relevant Techniques