WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: More problems with tables, PDF, and screen readers

for

From: Duff Johnson
Date: Apr 3, 2018 7:28PM


> We've run into the Acrobat setting for large documents before but it
> sounded like this was a separate issue. I made a simple table in Word that
> spanned several pages. When I saved as PDF, the resulting tagged PDF had a
> <table> tag on every page with its own <thead> and <tbody>, so there was
> literally one table per page. That sounds like a bug in Word.

More specifically, a bug in the software that's converting the Word file to a PDF.

> But hand editing isn't a viable solution for large documents or a large
> number of documents. Perhaps you might have luck contacting MS directly
> (stifled laugh), although if you call with an accessibility issue, maybe
> they'll be responsive.

Yes, they will be responsive. This is *precisely* the sort of feedback they need, and I've observed them to act on it before. Nothing will happen unless people *say something*.

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/how-do-i-give-feedback-on-microsoft-office-2b102d44-b43f-4dd2-9ff4-23cf144cfb11

> If the Word doc only has one table in it, the
> resulting PDF should only have one table in it.

Absolutely; anything less is a bug, pure-and-simple.

Duff.