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

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From: Karlen Communications
Date: Apr 4, 2018 7:11AM

I still recommend that you have the Header Row Repeat so that when the table spans more than one page, visually people with visual, learning or cognitive disabilities will be able to identify the column titles.

Not sure/can't remember if the PDF and PDF/UA specs state that tables (and lists) aren't to be broken over pages...or that paragraphs aren't to be broken over pages for that matter.

While in Word, the adaptive technology reads the content seamlessly although we do have the ability to go into the Page Header/Page Footer information if we want. We are also notified when we move to the previous or next page. We don't have that in the PDF environment. When documents are converted to tagged PDF or other formats, the Page Breaks are respected. This is the major reason I recommend the Header Row Repeat is turned on. As of last year, with Word 2016/Office 365, Word Tags the Header row Repeat information on each page as the table spans multiple pages.

This is an ongoing discussion. If having page numbers tagged is not an issue, then having all of a paragraph, list or table together is something we remediate. If the page numbers are to be tagged, it is recommended that the page number either proceed or follow an entire paragraph rather than create a comprehension issue by placing the page number in the middle of text. However, I'm not sure that the PDF/UA specs cover how to add page numbers as Tags if you want a list or table to be intact under its parent Tag as it spans multiple pages. Where would the Page Number Tag be placed without interrupting the list or table content?

Perhaps this should be an option when converting to tagged PDF. We have the choice of keeping all of the content for a paragraph, list or table together or we have the ability to strategically Tag page numbers/leave room to Tag page numbers? We would still have the problem of where to add the Page Number Tags for lists and tables that span multiple pages, but it might help us in some PDF remediations where page numbers aren't important.

Cheers, Karen



-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of glen walker
Sent: Tuesday, April 3, 2018 11:53 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] More problems with tables, PDF, and screen readers

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 right now we get only 1 row
> automatically tagged as the header, but understand that Microsoft is
> aware of that shortcoming and we should be able to set multiple rows
> as repeating headers in the future.
>
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