{
  "schemaVersion": "crawler-atlas-1",
  "atlasVersion": "atlas-2026-07-28-v1",
  "canonical": "/atlas/tables",
  "title": "Data tables",
  "category": {
    "slug": "structure",
    "title": "Content structure for machines"
  },
  "definition": "A data table expresses relationships through rows, columns, headers, captions, and cells.",
  "mechanism": "Explicit th scope, captions, and simple topology let parsers attach each value to the correct dimension without relying on visual alignment.",
  "validation": "Convert the table into records using only markup associations and confirm that every data cell retains its row and column labels.",
  "commonFailure": "Merged cells, layout tables, and important meaning encoded only by color make extraction ambiguous.",
  "related": [
    "/atlas/semantic-html",
    "/atlas/structured-data"
  ],
  "modified": "2026-07-28"
}