Working with tables has always been one of the biggest friction points for screen reader users. Whether dealing with a complex web table, a spreadsheet-style layout, or a structured report, extracting usable information has often meant slow navigation, unreliable copying, and extensive cleanup.
Leasey Table Capture changes that. This feature is designed to make capturing table data faster, more reliable, and dramatically more flexible than traditional copy-and-paste. Capture exactly what you need — instantly.
With Leasey Table Capture, you can quickly capture:
Each capture is appended to a dedicated Leasey capture buffer, allowing you to collect information from different areas of a table — or even from entirely different tables — and review it all together.
You can also choose how cells are separated, such as by new lines, new paragraphs, spaces, vertical bars, or commas. This makes it easier to move captured data into documents, spreadsheets, emails, or reports without needing to reformat it afterwards.
Not all tables are created equal. Many websites fail to mark up headers properly, causing traditional screen reader table navigation to break down. Leasey Table Capture intelligently handles both:
The result is meaningful, usable header information even on poorly coded websites.
Instead of struggling with manual selection and copying, Leasey allows you to:
This makes Table Capture ideal for research, auditing, form filling, data verification, report writing, comparison tasks, and any situation where structured information needs to be gathered quickly and accurately.
It is helpful to be familiar with the standard JAWS table navigation keystrokes. At a basic level, these include ALT+Control combined with the Up, Down, Left, and Right Arrow keys to move between rows and columns.
Table Capture currently supports tables displayed in web browsers and Microsoft Word.
All captured information is rendered as plain text. This feature is designed for gathering and reviewing table data, and at present does not export directly to specific structured file formats such as Excel. However, captured data can easily be pasted into other applications for further use.
The concept behind the Table Capture feature is simple and efficient. You press a key combination known as the Table Capture Key. This key is Windows+Grave Accent pressed together. You are already familiar with the location of the Grave Accent key, as it is also used as the Leasey Key.
When you press this key combination, JAWS announces “Table,” confirming that Table Capture mode is active.
You can then press one of several additional keys to capture specific parts of the table. A complete list of keystrokes is provided at the end of this chapter. For example:
Each capture adds information to a virtual buffer. This is a temporary storage area that collects captured data until you choose to review or copy it to the clipboard.
Before capturing data, you may wish to choose how captured cells will be separated within the buffer. This determines how the data will appear when viewed or pasted into another application.
To choose a separator, press Table Key then O. Available options include:
Select the desired option and press Enter. Your choice is remembered until you change it again.
Before beginning a new capture session, it is recommended that you clear the buffer to avoid mixing previous data with new content.
To clear the buffer, press Table Key then Up Arrow.
You may now capture as many cells, rows, columns, or tables as needed from one or multiple tables.
To view the contents of the buffer at any time, press Table Key then Space. The captured data is displayed in the JAWS Virtual Viewer for closer inspection. Press Escape to close the viewer.
To copy all buffered data to the clipboard, press Table Key then Down Arrow.
We will now work through some practical examples of using the Table Capture keystrokes. It is not necessary to demonstrate every function in detail. If you are familiar with tables, reviewing the keystrokes listed at the end of this chapter should make it clear what will be captured when a particular command is used. However, the following exercises will help illustrate typical real-world usage.
You may use any table you wish for practice. In these examples, we will use the web page:
This page contains a radio schedule presented as seven separate tables — one for each day of the week. Each table has four columns: Start, End, Show, and Description.
If you wish, you may now copy the table to the clipboard by pressing Table Key then Down Arrow. Alternatively, continue with the next exercise to see how multiple tables can be combined.
In this example, we will capture specific cells from different tables. The programme Totally 90's appears on Saturday and Totally 80's appears on Sunday. We will capture the show title and description for both entries.
This example demonstrates how data can be gathered from different locations and combined into a single, clean output without needing to manually select or copy text.
Use the Table Key followed by:
These commands allow precise control over what is captured, enabling you to extract exactly the information you need from even the most complex tables.
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