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Re: PDF tables that span pages / repeating header rows / AT

for

From: Jonathan Avila
Date: Jun 12, 2017 7:01AM


> I assume my settings on JAWS or Acrobat are not correct, because why would this be recommended if the header cells on previous pages are not being announced by screen readers?

The setting in Acrobat to present the document as a single page or whole document to the screen reader can affect this. If only the single page is presented to the accessibility tree the screen reader can't get the headers from the other pages. Generally you want to have the whole document presented to AT unless the document is so large it causes sluggishness with the AT. There is a setting in Acrobat for this which has a default threshold of 50 pages.

Jonathan

Jonathan Avila
Chief Accessibility Officer
SSB BART Group (soon to be Level Access)
<EMAIL REMOVED>
703.637.8957 (Office)

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-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Dona Patrick
Sent: Monday, June 12, 2017 7:40 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: [WebAIM] PDF tables that span pages / repeating header rows / AT

I've been recommending and following my own advice that when tables span pages on PDF files the header rows that are repeated on each page after the first page should be marked as background, and the table be combined into one (as recommended by HHS' Encouraged Fixes for PDF files <https://www.hhs.gov/web/section-508/making-files-accessible/pdf-encouraged/index.html>
).

Repeated Headers are not Tagged as Background A data table spans more than one page and the repeated header row on each page is tagged instead of being marked as background. Tag all repeated headers as background and remove TR tags from tag tree. For this item, ASPA/DCD uses manual inspection. Inspect the document for tables that span pages. Open the tag tree to see if the repeated header is tagged. No tools used.
Recently I have tried to read these tables using JAWS and discovered that the JAWS does not recognize the header cells on subsequent pages (pages where the header cells are artifacted). JAWS associates the row header cells, but not the (properly marked up) column header cells with the data cells.

I assume my settings on JAWS or Acrobat are not correct, because why would this be recommended if the header cells on previous pages are not being announced by screen readers?

Thank you,

Dona Patrick