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Re: Complex "Rule" table in PDF

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From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Aug 19, 2009 10:25AM

Just like if you wanted this table to be accessible in HTML, you are going to need to use headers and id attributes.

Thanks,
AWK

Andrew Kirkpatrick

Senior Product Manager, Accessibility

Adobe Systems

<EMAIL REMOVED> <mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> >

From: Langum, Michael J [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2009 11:48 AM
To: Duff Johnson; <EMAIL REMOVED> ; Andrew Kirkpatrick; Don Barrett; <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: Complex "Rule" table in PDF

You guys are my "go to" people for difficult PDF/accessibility issues. If anyone has time, I'd really appreciate some help on this.


I have been given a large document with many complex rule tables like this: http://www.opm.gov/_mike/test/PDF-Issues/BadTableExample.pdf.

You'll notice that the "IF" part of the rules covers columns 2 - 4, and the "THEN" part of the rules covers columns 5 - 8.

Also, in many cases, cells span multiple rows.

What is the best way to work with this in PDF tagging?

I'm sure I can't simply make all the cells in the first column be <th> and add "scope=row".

Would it be enough to make all the cells in the "IF" columns be <th> and add "scope=row"?

Do I need to explicitly copy and paste the contents of all the related "IF" cells, into the "alternate text" for each cell in the "THEN" cells?

Are there reasonable alternatives?
-- Mike