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PDF files and marking up data tables for screen reader users

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From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Nov 2, 2011 8:24PM

Evening all (or morning, if you are strange enough not to check your
email last thing at night).

I have seen a few PDF discussions on here, and I know Andrew and
others are monitorring it, so I hope a PDF related question is ok.

I have been asked to provide feedback on an opinion pole, produced by
Gallup on behalf of an organization I work for.
The report is in PDF format (originally created from Powerpoint, which
is a very bad idea for accessibility).
After some back and forth with them , and with some good advice, I've
managed to get the report text tagged correctly, and it reads fine
(the people I have communicated with at Gallup were not aware of
accessibility, but they've been very responsive to my suggestions).
As soon as the report gets to the point where the results of the
individual questions are analyzed, the report is, more or less, just a
series of data tables. Currently they are not marked up, and it would
take hours of painstaking screen reading word by word, to get anything
meaningful out of the mess.
What is the current situation regarding tagging data tables in PDF
files. Can they be read at a similar quality and accuracy levels and
corresponding html tables (captions, scope, headings, row titles etc)?
Even with accessible and tagged text, this report is nearly useless
without that work being done, and I worry it would be extensive and
probably enough so that it would behard to convince the company to do
it (though I have not discussed it with them).
Would it be more sensible to suggest they provide said tables in
Word/Excel or HTML formats, or is there a fairly straight-forward way
to tag tables, I am not positive, but I am pretty sure the tagging
takes place inside Adobe Acrobat X.
Thanks for any information on this.
-Birkir