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Re: PDf Table with one column "artifacted"

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From: Duff Johnson
Date: Oct 24, 2019 12:42PM

Hi Alan,

Why not simply keep your two tables in the authoring tool but merge the two tables in the tags tree?

Duff.

> On Oct 24, 2019, at 14:29, Alan Zaitchik < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
> I am working on a wide PDF table of 16 columns that is broken into two
> tables of 8 columns so that it can be printed in hardcopy form across a
> page that is then folded down the middle, thus forming a booklet. Each pair
> of two facing pages thus present the two halves of a table. (I hope this
> makes sense.) Users can opt for a digital version of the booklet, and users
> with vision disabilities indeed do so; they can use AT to access the
> tables, but because each table is implemented as two separate tables (one
> on the left-side page with the first 8 columns and one on the right-side
> page with the remaining 8 columns) the row headers from the left-side table
> do not apply to the table on the facing right-side page. These row headers
> are far two wordy to bear literal reproduction on the right-side page --
> and anyway the customer wants to maintain the current visual appearance of
> the two tables as being a single table (with a fold in the middle).
> I tried creating a single table with a white-space (borderless) column down
> the middle, so that the physical fold would be in the middle of the
> white-space column. This sort of works, although the screen readers get a
> bit confused when the user steps into an empty "fold cell". (An SR
> basically announces "blank". Playing with ALT text on the cells didn't
> really help much.) What I wanted to do was "artifact" the entire fold
> column so that screen readers would ignore it altogether. Then the user
> would navigate to next and previous cells skipping over the artifacted
> "fold cell". But I find that although the tags make it clear we have a
> single table the mere presence of this artifacted column in the middle
> makes the screen reader see 2 tables, not 1. It actually says that there
> are 2 tables of 8 columns, not 1 table of 17. The artifacted "fold column"
> is interpreted as the table boundary of each table, for some reason! So
> this is a failure.
>
> Has anyone successfully created a table with a column down the middle set
> to artifact, so a screen reader would just ignore it but still see a single
> table?
>
> Thanks
> A
>
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