WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

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

for

From: Karlen Communications
Date: Apr 4, 2018 4:16AM

Yes, as of Word 2016/Office 365 if you have First Column checked in the Table Tools, Design Ribbon, it will identify the cells in the first columns as TH cells. This was added about a year ago.

Cheers, Karen

Sent from my iPad

> On Apr 3, 2018, at 11:52 PM, glen walker < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
> I do have the latest Office. I don't use PDF Maker (that I know of). From
> Word, I just do a Save As and choose PDF as the file type. I looked in
> Word > Options > Add-ins (and COM Add-ins) and there aren't any Adobe
> plugins. I don't have Acrobat.
>
> And yes, the table in my word document has a header row and row properties
> checked.
>
> But while I'm at it, is there a way to make row headers in a table? Column
> headers are easy. But I want the first column in my table to serve as the
> row headers so that when I navigate vertically through a column, I'll hear
> the row header before the cell value. I know I can add a bookmark within
> Word itself, and that seems to work when reading the document with word,
> but if I save as PDF, the row header information isn't saved. I want
> something like <th scope='row'> in my resulting PDF (or resulting HTML).
>
>
>> On Tue, Apr 3, 2018 at 8:25 PM, < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>>
>> Glen Walker wrote:
>> <Quote> 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. </Quote>
>>
>> It was a bug in the Word-to-PDF conversion, but has been corrected with
>> the latest versions of Word and the Acrobat plug-in for Office, PDF Maker.
>> Sounds like one or both of your software programs is at least a year
>> out-of-date.
>>
>> Solution: Update both software programs. Current versions are:
>> Word 2016 version 1803 or Word 365
>> Adobe Acrobat Pro DC version 2018.011.2038
>> Adobe PDF Maker version 18 (the plug-in is installed with Acrobat)
>>
>> There's a slight chance some operator error slipped into your file too, so
>> make sure the following is done in the Word file:
>>
>> 1. Select the header row and ensure that the Header Row check box is
>> selected in the Table/Design ribbon.
>>
>> 2. With header row selected, also go to Table Properties / Row / and check
>> Repeat as header row at the top of each page.
>>
>> With the right software and the right settings in Word, you'll get a
>> perfect table. Well, other than ri