• Success Criterion 1.3.2
  • Conformance level A
  • W3C reference F33

Text Columns Faked With Spaces Read Aloud Out of Order

1.3.2 — Meaningful Sequence

Scenario

Setting

A news outlet's article page

What’s wrong

Spaces/tabs are used to fake side-by-side columns in plain text — read aloud, the lines interleave into nonsense.

Example 

<p>Sept 14     Lions at Tigers     7:00 PM<br>
Sept 21     Bears at Wolves     1:00 PM</p>

Why it matters

On a narrow screen or with custom text spacing, the padded spaces collapse and each game's date, matchup, and time run together into one unreadable line.

How to test

Copy the 'columns' into a plain text editor: if built with spaces/tabs, the lines interleave into nonsense when read linearly.

How to fix

Use a real table (or CSS grid) for tabular data instead of manual space padding.

<table>
  <tr><th>Date</th><th>Matchup</th><th>Time</th></tr>
  <tr><td>Sept 14</td><td>Lions at Tigers</td><td>7:00 PM</td></tr>
</table>

Outcome

Each game's date, matchup, and time now come through as separate, labeled cells.

Who is affected

Screen reader users hear a long run of dates, teams, and times with no separation, and low-vision users zoomed in lose the column alignment entirely.

Learn more

Related scenarios