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Don't Ditch One of Your Best Design Tools

So incorporating tables may not be such an easy matter. You may be wishing at this point that we had simply stated "Don't Use Tables." However, this isn't very practical advice, and we know that many of you creative and autonomous people out there would defy such advice - much as we did when we were told to lose tables. The use of tables can be of great benefit to your overall design, maybe even necessary for certain content. But giving just an added bit of consideration to tables will make every one that you use accessible to your blind users.

All that being said, tables are greatly overused. Contrary to past design knowledge, you do not need a table to add margins to you pages, create indented blocks of text or to give backgrounds to your headings. To take a look at how you can help your pages break free from confines of a table while adding accessibility and maintainability to your site, be sure to visit the section on CSS. We pooh-poohed CSS at first, and you probably will, too, but they have become our best friend.