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Re: Does MS Word support marking up of complex data tables?

for

From: Jim Homme
Date: Jul 13, 2017 6:52AM

Hi,
I would be pleasantly surprised to find out that Word associates heading cells with data cells. This is why screen readers use the work-around of bookmarks with naming conventions. The only thing I am aware of that MS does to make tables talk better with screen readers is that in the table properties, we have alt and title, but I believe JAWS does not pick this up, whereas NVDA does. And I do not think it carries over when you save as PDF. I would be very happy to find out that I am wrong on any of these points.

Jim

=========Jim Homme,
Team Lead and Accessibility Consultant,
Bender HighTest Accessibility Team
Bender Consulting Services, Inc.,
412-787-8567,
<EMAIL REMOVED>
http://www.benderconsult.com/our%20services/hightest-accessible-technology-solutions
E+R=O

From: Angela French<mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Sent: Wednesday, July 12, 2017 6:54 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List<mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Does MS Word support marking up of complex data tables?

Jim - so you are saying that after saving as PDF, an editor could use Acrobat Pro to correctly associate headers and cells for a complex table? Has anyone ever heard why MS won't improve on this issue? Aren't we in 2017?

Angela French

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Jim Allan
Sent: Wednesday, July 12, 2017 2:29 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Does MS Word support marking up of complex data tables?

Word has only rudimentary table mark up (first row header). Converting to PDF or HTML requires manual markup enhancement as the semantics are not provided by Word.

Jim

On Wed, Jul 12, 2017 at 3:00 PM, Angela French < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Hello,
> Can anyone tell me please, if current versions of MS Word support the
> marking up of complex data tables ? I am unable to find anything on
> the web. I know that as of Word 2010 it was not possible to
> structurally associated merged or split data cells with their
> associated headers. But I don't know about more recent versions.
>
>
> Thank you,
>
> Angela French
> Internet/Intranet Specialist
> Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges
> 360-704-4316
> <EMAIL REMOVED> <mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> www.sbctc.edu<;http://www.sbctc.edu/>;
>
> > > archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> >



--
Jim Allan, Accessibility Coordinator
Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired
1100 W. 45th St., Austin, Texas 78756
voice 512.206.9315 fax: 512.206.9264 http://www.tsbvi.edu/
"We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us." McLuhan, 1964