[BlindRUG] Are tables in Shiny apps accessible?

[Björn Fisseler]

Hi Liz,

you question caught my attention, as I have questioned this myself very 
often. Shiny apps generally use DataTables to display table data. The 
Shiny gallery also has some examples of using DT to display tables:

  * Overview: https://shiny.posit.co/r/gallery/
  * Simple example:
    https://shiny.posit.co/r/gallery/widgets/basic-datatable/

Taking at look at the generated HTML does not look bad at first, as DT 
uses th elements for headers and td elements for the cells. For a table 
to be accessible, it is usually recommended to use the scope attribute 
to associate data cells with the headers, as for example WebAIM 
recommends: https://webaim.org/techniques/tables/data

The problem is, that DT does not associate th elements with td, as the 
scope attribute is completely missing in the examples.

Generally speaking, the whole issue of accessibility of Shiny apps is 
pretty unclear. To my knowledge, there is very scarce information on 
this, e.g. Jumping Rivers published three or four blog posts on the 
topic of accessibility: https://www.jumpingrivers.com/tags/accessibility/

I would be happy if somebody else has more info to share on this issue.

Best

     Björn

Am 13.02.24 um 14:36 schrieb Liz Hare via BlindRUG:
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> Hi all,
>
>
> Does anyone have experience with text output like tables in Shiny apps? The interactive display would be really good for some of my reports but I don't want to spend time on it if I won't be able to navigate and read the output.
>   Liz
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Dr. Björn Fisseler
-- 
FernUniversität in Hagen
Fakultät für Psychologie, Zentralbereich
Universitätstr. 27, Gebäude 5 (PRG), Raum A020, 58097 Hagen
-- 
Tel ++49 2331 987 2211
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https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8178-7479
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