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JAWS cannot handle complex table

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From: Alan Zaitchik
Date: Mar 28, 2018 5:58AM

I have some "irregular" tables in a PDF, of a rather simple nature, which JAWS is not reading correctly.
Each table has 4 columns and 5 rows. (In this email let's call each cell r1c1, r1c2,..., r2c1, r2c2,..., etc. for row 1-col 1, row 1-col 2, ..., row 2-col 1, row 2-col 2,..., and so on.)
The first row is the header row, and each TH has scope=column. The next 4 rows contain just data cells, but (here's the catch) there is only one data cell in column 3 and one data cell in column 4 because each of these TD cells spans all the remaining 4 rows of data cells in columns 1 and 2. That is, r2c3 has a row span of 4, and r2c4 has a row span of 4.
No matter what I do, JAWS (v16) does not read the data cell r2c3 nor the cell r2c4 when it reads rows 3,4, and 5 of the table. It does, however, correctly read the cells r2c3 and r2c4 when it reads row 2.
I have tried fixing this in Acrobat-- both using scope as well as indexed headers-- to no avail. I have also tried setting this up in CommonLook PDF Global Access using their table tools, again trying both using scope as well as indexed headers, also to no avail. NVDA was able to handle the table without a problem, but I need it to work well in JAWS.
Any suggestions?
Alan