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Re: Lengthy Tables, Lists, and Screen Readers

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From: Jonathan Cohn
Date: Jul 15, 2018 7:49PM

This sounds like you hit the Adobe page limit. Adobe files that are over a threshold only load one page at a time instead of the entire document. I seem to remember the default being 25 pages, but not having any issues when I increased that value to 100.


Best wishes,

Jonathan Cohn



> On Jul 15, 2018, at 8:59 PM, 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.
>>>>>
>>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>
>>> >>> >>> >>> >>>
>>
> > > >