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Re: Irregular table woes

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From: Philip Kiff
Date: Jul 9, 2017 10:03AM

The regularity test in Acrobat looks only at the tags, not at what you
may see visually. If your table has 5 <TH>'s in the first row and then 5
<TD>'s in every subsequent row, and no row/column spans, then it should
not be irregular. There is no point adding a blank extra column by
inserting a blank <TH> at the top and then a blank <TD> to every row. If
the table is irregular now and you add a single item to each row, then
it will still be irregular when you finish. And as you suggest, the
blank column will potentially confuse users of assistive technology.

I suspect that one or more cells has already been marked incorrectly as
spanning 2 or more columns or rows and that is why the table is being
flagged as irregular.

To fix the table tags, I wouldn't use the Edit page function, but
instead try first to use the "Table Editor" that you can activate from
the "Touch Up Reading Order" tool when you have a table cell selected.
Sometimes that editor won't even start with an irregular table, but if
it does, then you can visually inspect the red lines it shows and see if
that helps you figure out which cell(s) may be causing problems. Check
the header row(s) in particular. If that doesn't help, you can use the
Table Editor to select ALL the cells in the table (or perhaps one page
at a time) by holding the SHIFT key while you click on each cell within
the red borders. The right-click or context menu will then allow you to
set properties for all selected cells at once. Set all the Row Span and
Column Span properties to 1. Repeat for each page of the table. See if
that eliminates the irregularity.

Alternatively, you can try using the Preview function of the free PDF
Accessibility Checker (PAC) tool. I find it helpful in pinpointing the
specific rows or cells that are causing the regularity test to fail. And
then you can manually edit tag properties in Acrobat's to fix row or col
span values.

Phil.