WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Lengthy Tables, Lists, and Screen Readers

for

From: Ryan E. Benson
Date: Jul 15, 2018 7:19PM

I am willing to lean towards a bug in JAWS, but it is hard to say for sure
without the file in question. I would say that it should work fine for the
last few versions of JAWS.

Ryan E. Benson

On Sun, Jul 15, 2018, 20:59 Alan Zaitchik < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Thank you Duff and Ryan. I apologize for not having explained in more
> detail.
> The problems I referred to are, first, with table data cells that contain
> so much content that they span a (visual) page boundary, especially when
> the cell content is a very long list. In these cases no matter that my
> table tagging ignores the page boundary, JAWS does not see a single list in
> a single cell. It stops reading the list at the (visual) page boundary. So
> perhaps the issue is a JAWS shortcoming?
> Another case: even when the table rows do not cross a page boundary
> there's a (different) problem with JAWS— it won't read the column headings
> when i moved to the next row on the next (visual) page.
> Perhaps these issues are fixed in the latest release of JAWS, but I don't
> have it.
> A
>
> > On Jul 13, 2018, at 5:51 PM, Ryan E. Benson < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> wrote:
> >
> > 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.
> >>>>
> >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>
> >> > >> > >> > >> > >>
> >
>