Effective Practices for Description of Science Content within Digital Talking Books
Example E: Tables

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1. Simple Table
2. Complex Table

Simple Table

Guidelines:

• Tables should be presented as properly marked-up HTML tables, providing independent access to the data.
• In this case, the caption and the question are included in the description.
• Describing the table itself would be unnecessarily repetitive.

Description:

A student conducted a probability simulation by rolling a number cube that has each face marked with a number from 1 to 6. The results of his simulation are given in the table below:

Numbers Showing	1	2	3	4	5	6
Number of Times Rolled	7	6	8	12	1	6

Question: Based on the data shown in the table, what is the probability of rolling a number greater than 3?


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Complex Table

Guidelines:

• While this table is complex with several layers of headings, it can be broken into three separate tables under the headings: Motor vehicle traffic, Firearm suicide and Firearm homicides.
• Providing three separate tables will aid in navigation and comprehension.
• The table includes two reference notations: a hyphen representing Quantity zero and a superscript one indicating that SE stands for standard error. To avoid confusion in the tables below, the superscript one and the hyphen were simply replaced with the words "Quantity zero" and "standard error." This is an example of providing greater clarity as opposed to mimicking the exact visuals of the table.
• If desirable, this complex table may also be replicated exactly through proper HTML coding.

Description:

Figure 9 is a table titled: Average annual weighted number of deaths and percent distribution of deaths by body region of injury, for motor vehicle traffic accidents, firearm suicides, and firearm homicides: United States 2003-2004.

For better navigation, the table has been separated into three tables.

Motor vehicle traffic

Body region	Number of deaths	Percent distribution	Standard Error (percent)
Total	43,386	100.0	Quantity zero
Head and neck	13,862	32.0	0.3
Torso	7,382	17.0	0.3
Other specified	911	2.1	0.3
Spine, upper back	492	1.1	0.3
Extremities	410	1.0	0.3
Unclassifiable by body region	14,691	33.9	0.3
Unspecified	6,540	15.1	0.3

Firearm suicide

Body region	Number of deaths	Percent distribution	Standard Error (percent)
Total	16,829	100.0	Quantity zero
Head and neck	12,428	73.9	0.3
Torso	2,211	13.1	0.5
Other specified	28	0.2	0.5
Spine, upper back	13	0.1	0.5
Extremities	14	0.1	0.5
Unclassifiable by body region	67	0.4	0.5
Unspecified	2,094	12.4	0.5

Firearm homicide

Body region	Number of deaths	Percent distribution	Standard Error (percent)
Total	11,772	100.0	Quantity zero
Head and neck	3,714	31.5	0.5
Torso	4,005	34.0	0.5
Other specified	397	3.4	0.6
Spine, upper back	33	0.3	0.7
Extremities	363	3.1	0.6
Unclassifiable by body region	2,685	22.8	0.6
Unspecified	972	8.3	0.6

NOTE: See Appendix I, NVSS, Mortality Statistics for description of data sources and Appendix II, Multiple-cause-of-death data and injury diagnoses, for method to calculate annual weighted number of deaths; Standard error. See Tables III and IV for classification codes.

SOURCE: CDC/NCHS, National Vital Statistics System.


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Funding for this project is provided by the National Science Foundation.