Accessible iso-8859-1 Table
Often the tools we use are readily available on the 'net, yet for whatever reason the sources are less than accessible to users of Adaptive Technology.
A case in point is the table of iso8859-1 character codes and named entities. While this large table is available in numerous locations across the web, each instance we uncovered was not accessible. Often the table was simply visually laid out and enclosed in the <pre> element - hardly accessible to screen readers and other alternative devices.
We thought an accessible version might be useful to those AT users who may need to reference this important Standards document. We have reformulated it into an accessible table, using the appropriate semantic markup elements and attributes, such as adding the "SCOPE" attribute to the <th> element (<th scope="colgroup">).
Why is this document so important?
Have you ever seen text that appears as a series of untelligible characters such as a "boxes" on a web page? Have you ever wondered why?
It's about the character set being used by your browser, and the fact that the authored page has made a request for a character which has not been mapped to the Standard. There are many reasons why this may be happening - perhaps the character set / font files required are not present on your system (for example, foreign language fonts or glyphs - see Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics), or the page developer has "copied and pasted" content created in a word processor and has copied over specialized symbols or accented letters that were authored in a different character set. The ASCII character set is not sufficient for a global information system such as the Web, so (X)HTML uses the much more complete character set called the Universal Character Set (UCS). The iso-8859-1 / Latin 1 character set is a subset of UCS. It covers most accented letters and symbols used in Western based languages.
However, for these accented letters or other symbols to render correctly in your web browser, their numeric or named character entity must be referenced. That is where this table comes in. The complete Latin 1 / iso8859-1 character set is here. Authors should use either the named entity or numeric code reference to ensure that their content renders correctly.
This is the chart for HTML 4.x, but also applies to XHTML 1.x.
Further Resources
The iso8859-1 table
| Description | Character | Code | Entity name |
|---|---|---|---|
| Description | Character | Code | Entity name |
| character space |   | ||
| exclamation mark | ! | ! | |
| quotation mark | " | " | " |
| octothorpe (a.k.a Number sign or pound symbol) |
# | # | |
| dollar symbol | $ | $ | |
| percentage | % | % | |
| ampersand | & | & | & |
| apostrophe | ' | ' | ' (in XHTML only) |
| left parenthesis | ( | ( | |
| right parenthesis | ) | ) | |
| asterisk star symbol |
* | * | |
| plus symbol | + | + | |
| comma | , | , | |
| hyphen, minus symbol or dash | - | - | |
| period | . | . | |
| solidus back-slash | / | / | |
| number 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| number 1 | 1 | 1 | |
| number 2 | 2 | 2 | |
| number 3 | 3 | 3 | |
| number 4 | 4 | 4 | |
| number 5 | 5 | 5 | |
| number 6 | 6 | 6 | |
| number 7 | 7 | 7 | |
| number 8 | 8 | 8 | |
| number 9 | 9 | 9 | |
| colon | : | : | |
| semi-colon | ; | ; | |
| less-than sign | < | < | < |
| equals symbol | = | = | |
| greater-than sign | > | > | > |
| question mark | ? | ? | |
| commercial "at" symbol | @ | @ | |
| uppercase A | A | A | |
| uppercase B | B | B | |
| uppercase C | C | C | |
| uppercase D | D | D | |
| uppercase E | E | E | |
| uppercase F | F | F | |
| uppercase G | G | G | |
| uppercase H | H | H | |
| uppercase I | I | I | |
| uppercase J | J | J | |
| uppercase K | K | K | |
| uppercase L | L | L | |
| uppercase M | M | M | |
| uppercase N | N | N | |
| uppercase O | O | O | |
| uppercase P | P | P | |
| uppercase Q | Q | Q | |
| uppercase R | R | R | |
| uppercase S | S | S | |
| uppercase T | T | T | |
| uppercase U | U | U | |
| uppercase V | V | V | |
| uppercase W | W | W | |
| uppercase X | X | X | |
| uppercase Y | Y | Y | |
| uppercase Z | Z | Z | |
| left square bracket | [ | [ | |
| reverse solidus back slash |
\ | \ | |
| right square bracket | ] | ] | |
| caret or circumflex accent | ^ | ^ | |
| underscore | _ | _ | |
| grave accent | ` | ` | |
| lowercase a | a | a | |
| lowercase b | b | b | |
| lowercase c | c | c | |
| lowercase d | d | d | |
| lowercase e | e | e | |
| lowercase f | f | f | |
| lowercase g | g | g | |
| lowercase h | h | h | |
| lowercase i | i | i | |
| lowercase j | j | j | |
| lowercase k | k | k | |
| lowercase l | l | l | |
| lowercase m | m | m | |
| lowercase n | n | n | |
| lowercase o | o | o | |
| lowercase p | p | p | |
| lowercase q | q | q | |
| lowercase r | r | r | |
| lowercase s | s | s | |
| lowercase t | t | t | |
| lowercase u | u | u | |
| lowercase v | v | v | |
| lowercase w | w | w | |
| lowercase x | x | x | |
| lowercase y | y | y | |
| lowercase z | z | z | |
| left curly brace | { | { | |
| pipe or vertical bar | | | | | |
| right curly brace | } | } | |
| tilde | ~ | ~ | |
| non-breaking space |   | | |
| inverted exclamation point | ¡ | ¡ | ¡ |
| cent sign | ¢ | ¢ | ¢ |
| pound sterling | £ | £ | £ |
| general currency | ¤ | ¤ | ¤ |
| yen sign | ¥ | ¥ | ¥ |
| broken vertical bar | ¦ | ¦ | &brkbar; |
| section sign | § | § | § |
| dieresis or umlat | ¨ | ¨ | ¨ |
| copyright symbol | © | © | © |
| feminine ordinal | ª | ª | ª |
| left guillemot | « | « | « |
| not sign | ¬ | ¬ | ¬ |
| soft hyphen | | ­ | ­ |
| registered trademark | ® | ® | ® |
| macron | ¯ | ¯ | ¯ |
| degree sign | ° | ° | ° |
| plus or minus | ± | ± | ± |
| superscript 2 | ² | ² | ² |
| superscript 3 | ³ | ³ | ³ |
| acute accent | ´ | ´ | ´ |
| mu | µ | µ | µ |
| pilcrow (Paragraph symbol) |
¶ | ¶ | ¶ |
| middle dot | · | · | · |
| cedilla | ¸ | ¸ | ¸ |
| superscript 1 | ¹ | ¹ | ¹ |
| masculine ordinal | º | º | º |
| right guillemot | » | » | » |
| fraction one-fourth | ¼ | ¼ | ¼ |
| fraction one-half | ½ | ½ | ½ |
| fraction three-fourths | ¾ | ¾ | ¾ |
| inverted question mark | ¿ | ¿ | ¿ |
| uppercase A, grave accent | À | À | À |
| uppercase A, acute accent | Á | Á | Á |
| uppercase A, circumflex accent | Â | Â | Â |
| uppercase A, tilde | Ã | Ã | Ã |
| uppercase A, dieresis | Ä | Ä | Ä |
| uppercase A, ring | Å | Å | Å |
| uppercase AE diphthong | Æ | Æ | Æ |
| uppercase C, cedilla | Ç | Ç | Ç |
| uppercase E, grave accent | È | &200; | È |
| uppercase E, acute accent | É | É | É |
| uppercase E, circumflex accent | Ê | Ê | Ê |
| uppercase E, dieresis | Ë | Ë | Ë |
| uppercase I, grave accent | Ì | Ì | Ì |
| uppercase I, acute accent | Í | Í | Í |
| uppercase I, circumflex accent | Î | Î | Î |
| uppercase I, dieresis | Ï | Ï | Ï |
| uppercase Eth | Ð | Ð | Ð |
| uppercase N, tilde | Ñ | Ñ | Ñ |
| uppercase O, grave accent | Ò | Ò | Ò |
| uppercase O, acute accent | Ó | Ó | Ó |
| uppercase O, circumflex accent | Ô | Ô | Ô |
| uppercase O, tilde | Õ | Õ | Õ |
| uppercase O, dieresis | Ö | Ö | Ö |
| multiply sign | × | × | × |
| uppercase O, slash | Ø | Ø | Ø |
| uppercase U, grave accent | Ù | Ù | Ù |
| uppercase U, acute accent | Ú | Ú | Ú |
| uppercase U, circumflex accent | Û | Û | Û |
| uppercase U, dieresis | Ü | Ü | Ü |
| uppercase Y, acute accent | Ý | Ý | Ý |
| uppercase Thorn | Þ | Þ | Þ |
| German sz ligature | ß | ß | ß |
| lowercase a, grave accent | à | à | à |
| lowercase a, acute accent | á | á | á |
| lowercase a, circumflex accent | â | â | â |
| lowercase a, tilde | ã | ã | ã |
| lowercase a, dieresis | ä | ä | ä |
| lowercase a, ring | å | å | å |
| lowercase ae ligature | æ | æ | æ |
| lowercase c, cedilla | ç | ç | ç |
| lowercase e, grave accent | è | è | è |
| lowercase e, acute accent | é | é | é |
| lowercase e, circumflex accent | ê | ê | ê |
| lowercase e, dieresis | ë | ë | ë |
| lowercase i, grave accent | ì | ì | ì |
| lowercase i, acute accent | í | í | í |
| lowercase i, circumflex accent | î | î | î |
| lowercase i, dieresis | ï | ï | ï |
| lowercase eth | ð | ð | ð |
| lowercase n, tilde | ñ | ñ | ñ |
| lowercase o, grave accent | ò | ò | ò |
| lowercase o, acute accent | ó | ó | ó |
| lowercase o, circumflex accent | ô | ô | ô |
| lowercase o, tilde | õ | õ | õ |
| lowercase o, dieresis | ö | ö | ö |
| division sign | ÷ | ÷ | ÷ |
| lowercase o, slash | ø | ø | ø |
| lowercase u, grave accent | ù | ù | ù |
| lowercase u, acute accent | ú | ú | ú |
| lowercase u, circumflex accent | û | û | û |
| lowercase u, dieresis | ü | ü | ü |
| lowercase y, acute accent | ý | ý | ý |
| lowercase thorn | þ | þ | þ |
| lowercase y, dieresis | ÿ | ÿ | ÿ |
The information provided in this table is based upon previous work by the following authors:
- Martin Ramsch - iso8859-1 table (http://www.ramsch.org/martin/uni/fmi-hp/iso8859-1.html)
- Bruce Salamandir-Feyrecilde (http://www.drizzle.com/~slmndr/)
Portions © International Organization for Standardization 1986 Permission to copy in any form is granted for use with conforming SGML systems and applications as defined in ISO 8879, provided this notice is included in all copies.
Last Updated: Dec.5, 2005 (with thanks to Jukka "Yucca" Korpela)
Unless otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License 
