table tags for form display are bad... but what about survey questions likert type?

Answer 1

This is not very hard with some help.
You might look into some of the grid-based css libraries our there.
Yahoo Grids
Blueprint
960 Grid System

Answer 2

This type of question leads more to opinions than to hard and fast facts, but I would say that in this case it's definitely OK to use tables -- you're wanting a tabular display of information.

Just use the table tag and don't let people make you feel guilty for it :-)

Answer 3

It's not bad to use tables per se. It's just bad to use them to layout your entire site using infinitely nested tables and invisible images for space.

Answer 4

What everyone says is "you should only use tables for tabular data". So ... what does that mean?

Here's my criterion for when something actually is tabular data: when you can only know what something is/does by reference to its coordinates, its position in relation to column and row headers.

So, in the case above, what is the function of the ninth radio button?

There's no way of knowing what it is unless you look left to the kind of skill it refers to and look up to the kind of level you're claiming. Therefore, this is tabular data.

Answer 5

From the point of view of accessibility, IMHO, it would make more sense laid out as a table, with appropriate th tags etc. As Ambrose said, the coordinates of the radio buttons give them contextual meaning.

You could lay it out without a table, and maybe make sense of it using labels, titles and other devices, but the only thing you would really achieve would be to demonstrate your css-fu.