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Re: Tables spanning pages

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From: Philip Kiff
Date: Oct 30, 2020 11:30AM

Hi Joe,

I agree with the first of your group. The correct way to tag the header
rows in a table that spans multiple pages in a PDF is to artifact the
header rows that appear on subsequent pages. They should remain visible
since table headers should be repeated visibly on every page of a table.
But these additional header rows should be removed from the PDF tag tree.

Microsoft Word makes a mistake by splitting a single logical table into
multiple table tags when converting to PDF. Eventually, I am sure that
both Microsoft Word and Adobe will fix this error in their Word-to-PDF
conversion engines, but until they do, it should be fixed manually,
using the method you describe. Delete the extra header tag and artifact
the content of that row, and then cut and paste all the rows from that
separate table into the first main table. Repeat for each page.

Some good Word-to-PDF conversion tools exist that already do this
correctly - both AxesPDF for Word and CommonLook Office will
automatically artifact these extra header rows for you and merge all the
table cells from multiple pages into a single table. Similar problems
can sometimes occur with nested lists when they span a page break in
Microsoft Word, causing a single list to be split into multiple lists.
These also need to be manually fixed (or use one of the other tools I
mentioned, which both are capable of correctly tagging such lists).

Phil.

Philip Kiff
D4K Communications

On 2020-10-30 12:31, Joseph Krack wrote:
> We have a question within our group about the appropriate way to tag
> tables in PDF which span multiple tables.
>
> If one table in Word spans multiple pages, it will appear as multiple
> Tables in the PDF tag tree when converted.  We have one table in
> particular that spans three pages and so is split into three Tables in
> the PDF.
>
> Some of our group believes the TR tags should all be combined back
> into one table in the tag tree (artifact the additional THead/TRs and
> then delete).  This keeps the number of tables in the document
> consistent with the original document.
>
>
> Some others like the fact that the table is split as they believe it
> is easier to manage for persons who use screen readers.
>
>
> Is there guidance from WCAG on this topic?  What would be the best way
> to handle this?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Joe
>
> > > >