Summary

The Summary tag appears in the Table element and provides additional information for text-based browsers and screen readers. It typically describes the organization of a table and a brief summary of its content. It is unnecessary (and a nuisance to screen reader users) to provide a summary for a table used for page layout.

Code Example:

<table width="80%" 
summary="This site map has seven columns that reflect 
the main content categories of the site.
The first row corresponds to categories and the following nine 
rows contain subpages. Tabs have been set to read down columns. 
Each cell contains a link.">

Browsers

The Summary tag is ignored by Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer.

Adaptive Technology

Home Page Reader will read the summary tag when Alt + F1 is pressed. JAWS will read the table summary when it encounters a table. "Accessible Web Sites" recommends not using the tag because it isn't fully supported by assistive technology; I recommend that you do include it given its support by current versions of Home Page Reader (3.2) and the last version of JAWS (4.0).