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Re: [External Sender]Table Accessibility

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From: Karlen Communications
Date: Jun 10, 2020 8:58AM

To my knowledge this will be phased out by Microsoft although I don't have a specific date. Also to my knowledge, none of the screen readers or Text-to-Speech tools supported this and it wasn't converted to anything if the document/presentation was converted to tagged PDF. It is also no longer part of the accessibility checker.

My understanding is that it was sort of like the Title and Description in the Alt Text pane/dialog...an attempt to harmonize with HTML that didn't quite work.

Cheers, Karen

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Philip Kiff
Sent: Tuesday, June 9, 2020 5:32 PM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] [External Sender] Re: Table Accessibility

On 2020-06-09 10:57, Khaleel Eksheir wrote:
> Thanks all for the feedback. My question was about PowerPoint specifically.
> It used to allow Alt Text for tables. That is why I used to recommend it.
> But as a result of this threat, I learned that MS is phasing out Alt
> Text for tables which makes sense.

Just a quick clarification here, to make sure I haven't missed something.

The ability to add alt text to tables in Microsoft PowerPoint has not changed, has it? I can add alternative text to a table in PowerPoint today in my up-to-date version of Office 365 for Windows. I am not aware of a plan to phase out that feature.

But the recommended best practice in PowerPoint has been moving away from adding a summary to the alternative text property of a table. And the built-in PowerPoint accessibility checker does not add a warning or error for tables that have no alternative text or summary.

My impression is that there may still be some cases and some PowerPoint documents where alternative text summaries of a table are useful - it depends on the intended audience and purpose.

For me, the question of whether or not an alternative text table summary is useful in an Office document relates to the question of whether an Office document actually provides a robust mechanism for assistive technology users to then use the data within a table. My impression that Microsoft Office is not currently capable of providing good navigation and access to all users in the case of a complex table, such as those with multiple spanned headers, or even just a table with both header columns and rows. And it is partly for this reason that the use of table summaries in PowerPoint and Word has gradually fallen out of favour.

A simple table should be understandable to assistive technology users without requiring additional explanation. Office allows you to mark the header row, and that's all you really need. A table that is so complex that it requires a summary to explain its structure will not actually be usable by some assistive technology users - those tables would be better placed in HTML or PDF document formats (both of which can handle complex
tables) instead of placing that data in PowerPoint or Word.

Sometimes, I have read that table summaries in Office documents should explain the purpose of the table, rather than describing its data structure. This is similar to the function of a table caption in some file formats. But I think it is generally accepted now that such "caption" type of information should be made visible to all users, rather than placing it as alternative text, where only screen reader users would access it.

I'm not sure if this jibes with what everyone has already said, but that's my understanding of alternative text for tables in Office documents these days.

Phil.

Philip Kiff
D4K Communications