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Re: Lengthy Tables, Lists, and Screen Readers

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From: Ryan E. Benson
Date: Jul 13, 2018 3:51PM

I agree with Duff, the page spans should be ignored and just tag it as one
long table. We would need know what you mean by awful problems.

--
Ryan E. Benson

On Fri, Jul 13, 2018 at 3:50 PM, Duff Johnson < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Hi Alan,
>
> I'm confused…
>
> The problem is when table-cells span pages, yes?
>
> Are you tagging the tables irrespective of the pages they span? If so I
> don't see why you should be having a problem.
>
> Duff.
>
> > On Jul 13, 2018, at 15:47, Alan Zaitchik < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> wrote:
> >
> > Thank you, Glen. Unfortunately I have no access to the original Word
> document for this legacy pdf. It has to be delivered back to the client as
> a PDF, too.
> > Another (similar) pdf will be arriving soon together with its source
> Word doc. I will certainly try to restructure the tables in that case with
> the "do not span page boundary" setting for data cells. The problem I
> foresee is that some data cells in these documents contain lists that are
> just too "long". Shrinking fonts and making extra columns in a cell is
> likely to prove unacceptable visually to the client. I'll have to give it a
> try and judge the results.
> > As for my present document, I have just the PDF. Acrobat is pretty
> horrible for editing so I may have to go with Lists.
> > A
> >
> >> On Jul 13, 2018, at 10:57 AM, glen walker < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> wrote:
> >>
> >> Given the tags of your example, I presume you're creating a PDF
> document?
> >> Are you creating it directly in acrobat or do you have a word doc (or
> some
> >> other format) that you're saving as PDF?
> >>
> >> Is there also an HTML equivalent? HTML obviously won't have a "page
> >> boundary" problem.
> >>
> >> Personally, I prefer navigating through a table rather than a list when
> >> using a screen reader. I like the row/col header announcements before
> the
> >> cell value, and it just feels natural to me to use ctrl+alt+arrowkeys to
> >> walk the grid in any direction I want. (Or go into table mode and use
> the
> >> plain arrow keys.) With a list, I'm sort of forced to navigate it
> >> sequentially. I can't jump from the 3rd item in one list to the 3rd
> item
> >> of the next list like I can with a table.
> >>
> >> Is your table only 2 columns? The row header and the data cell? That's
> >> the only scenario I can think of that wouldn't have column headers,
> >> although even then I think column headers would be helpful as you
> navigate
> >> horizontally between the data cell and the row header.
> >>
> >> Have you confirmed that the tags for your data cells that span across a
> >> page boundary are marked up properly?
> >>
> >> If you happen to be using Word to create your tables and are saving the
> >> document as PDF, just to rule out the obvious, have you turned OFF the
> >> "allow row to break across pages" option?
> >>
> >> I'm just trying to toss a few ideas out there that might spark other
> ideas.
> >>
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > >