Atk.Table should be implemented by components which present elements ordered via rows and columns. It may also be used to present tree-structured information if the nodes of the trees can be said to contain multiple "columns". Individual elements of an Atk.Table are typically referred to as "cells", and these cells are exposed by Atk.Table as child Atk.Objects of the Atk.Table. Both row/column and child-index-based access to these children is provided.

Children of Atk.Table are frequently "lightweight" objects, that is, they may not have backing widgets in the host UI toolkit. They are therefore often transient.

Since tables are often very complex, Atk.Table includes provision for offering simplified summary information, as well as row and column headers and captions. Headers and captions are Atk.Objects which may implement other interfaces (Atk.Text, Atk.Image, etc.) as appropriate. Atk.Table summaries may themselves be (simplified) Atk.Tables, etc.