Merge cells in Govspeak tables

[thomasjhughes1]

There isn't currently a way to merge cells in tables in Govspeak. I'm working on a piece of content that includes a lot of tables. A few of them have data that applies to multiple columns, so it would be useful if I could merge cells across the table.

I've attached screenshots of how one such table looks in Google Docs and how it looks when translated into Govspeak and published on GOV.UK.

As you can see, I've had to split this into 2 smaller tables as a workaround. I'm concerned this could lead to the information being misinterpreted by users. For example, users might think they only need to do the checks listed in one of the tables - not both.

Can someone please look into this? Thanks 🙂

[selfthinker]

As suggested in #110, the most common way to do that in other Markdown flavours or other plain text markup languages is by not leaving any spaces between the pipes, e.g.

|# First row      | Cell            | Very long data entry   |
|# Second row     | Cell            | Cell                   |
|# Third row      | Cell that spans across two columns      ||

[thomasjhughes1]

I came across a table in the Budget 2020 in which they've managed to merge the header cells.

It looks like they've done this using HTML.

<table class="financial-data source-tableeditor">
<thead>
<tr>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<th colspan="2">Employment rate</th>
<th colspan="2">Unemployment rate</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<th class="numeric">Actual (1)</th>
<th class="numeric">Difference from UK average (3)</th>
<th class="numeric">Actual (2)</th>
<th class="numeric">Difference from UK average (3)</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>North East</th>
<td class="numeric">71.1</td>
<td class="numeric">-5.4</td>
<td class="numeric">6.1</td>
<td class="numeric">2.3</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>North West</th>
<td class="numeric">75.9</td>
<td class="numeric">-0.6</td>
<td class="numeric">4.2</td>
<td class="numeric">0.4</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Yorkshire & the Humber</th>
<td class="numeric">73.3</td>
<td class="numeric">-3.2</td>
<td class="numeric">4.5</td>
<td class="numeric">0.7</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>East Midlands</th>
<td class="numeric">78.4</td>
<td class="numeric">1.9</td>
<td class="numeric">3.6</td>
<td class="numeric">-0.2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>West Midlands</th>
<td class="numeric">75.5</td>
<td class="numeric">-1.0</td>
<td class="numeric">4.4</td>
<td class="numeric">0.6</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>East of England</th>
<td class="numeric">78.6</td>
<td class="numeric">2.1</td>
<td class="numeric">3.3</td>
<td class="numeric">-0.5</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>London</th>
<td class="numeric">75.5</td>
<td class="numeric">-1.0</td>
<td class="numeric">4.3</td>
<td class="numeric">0.5</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>South East</th>
<td class="numeric">80.0</td>
<td class="numeric">3.5</td>
<td class="numeric">3.1</td>
<td class="numeric">-0.7</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>South West</th>
<td class="numeric">80.1</td>
<td class="numeric">3.6</td>
<td class="numeric">2.8</td>
<td class="numeric">-1.0</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Wales</th>
<td class="numeric">74.4</td>
<td class="numeric">-2.1</td>
<td class="numeric">2.9</td>
<td class="numeric">-0.9</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Scotland</th>
<td class="numeric">75.0</td>
<td class="numeric">-1.5</td>
<td class="numeric">3.5</td>
<td class="numeric">-0.3</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Northern Ireland</th>
<td class="numeric">72.4</td>
<td class="numeric">-4.1</td>
<td class="numeric">2.4</td>
<td class="numeric">-1.4</td>
</tr>
<tr class="subtotal">
<th>United Kingdom</th>
<td class="numeric">76.5</td>
<td class="numeric">0.0</td>
<td class="numeric">3.8</td>
<td class="numeric">0.0</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table class="financial-data source-tableeditor">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>1 Employed people as a percentage of the population (aged 16-64).</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2 Unemployed people as a percentage of the economically active population (aged 16+).</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>3 Percentage points.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Source: Office for National Statistics</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

[thomasjhughes1]

I've had a play around with this. I can get the table looking closer to how I need it to look by using the colspan HTML attribute. It's a bit more fiddly than creating Govspeak tables (which are quite fiddly themselves) and, while I might have the patience for HTML, the same can't be said for future generations of content designers.

I'm wondering if this might be a good short-term solution for the thing I'm working on while we keep this issue open.

Are there any accessibility issues with building tables in this way?

[selfthinker]

There is no question that HTML has the feature to merge table cells. But this is a request for Govspeak as it would be very helpful if Govspeak had that feature.
By the way, the budget tables are done with the help of this table editor: https://github.com/alphagov/table-editor

I know that the team building the new publishing tool have looked into making tables easier to write. I don't know what their conclusion was or if they have finished looking into it.

[thomasjhughes1]

Thanks @selfthinker. I did not know that table editor existed. I think I will make use of that for the thing I'm currently working on.