“A chart image can communicate a trend quickly while making its exact values hard to access. The official web-accessibility table guidance explains how captions and headers support readers. A property report should make the evidence available through structure as well as visual style, rather than relying on an image alone.
A chart image can communicate a trend quickly while making its exact values hard to access. The official web-accessibility table guidance explains how captions and headers support readers. A property report should make the evidence available through structure as well as visual style, rather than relying on an image alone.
Give the table a clear caption
Name the measure, geography, period and unit in the caption or adjacent explanation. A reader arriving directly at the table should understand what the numbers describe. Keep the wording aligned with the chart, so a figure labelled revenue is not paired with a table labelled sales merely because both were created from the same spreadsheet.
Use meaningful row and column headers
The accessibility tutorial explains table headers and their relationships to data cells. Apply appropriate semantic markup in the published report rather than simulating a table with unrelated text boxes. For a simple property comparison, clear row and column headers can preserve the relationship between the asset category, period and value.
Keep image descriptions purposeful
Describe the chart’s subject and the key comparison without placing an entire dense dataset into a single image description. Provide the exact values in the adjacent table. The image and table can serve complementary purposes: rapid visual orientation and inspectable evidence, with neither treated as a decorative duplicate that can be deleted without thought.
Test reading and mobile use
Check the report with keyboard navigation, a small screen and an appropriate assistive reading tool. Verify that sources and definitions remain reachable when a table scrolls. This original quality review should focus on understanding the evidence, not merely whether automated checking gives a high score for one page under one test configuration.
Read the table without its graphic
Temporarily hide the chart and ask whether the table still explains the subject, period, units and exact observations. Then review whether the chart adds a useful visual comparison rather than carrying missing definitions. This test checks the relationship between the two formats. An accessible report should not require a reader to see the image in order to know what a table’s numbers mean.
Sources and review date
Primary sources reviewed on 6 October 2026: W3C accessible data tables tutorial.
Your next practical step
Publish each numerical chart with a captioned semantic table and test whether its values and sources remain understandable on mobile. Explore the relevant Gameel service to turn the approved brief into clear public communication.