WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: [EXT] does every one else ind tables are problimaticwith your clients

for

From: Steve Green
Date: Sep 24, 2021 3:36AM


There should not be an automatic default setting for row headers because it would be inappropriate in many cases. Just a few days ago I had to spend ages changing inappropriate row headers into data cells in a PDF that had been authored in Word.

Of course there must be a way to manually designate row headers. And multiple levels of headers need to be supported too - we see a lot of Excel tables that need them, but there is no way to do it.

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd


-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of <EMAIL REMOVED>
Sent: 24 September 2021 08:02
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List' < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] [EXT] does every one else ind tables are problimatic with your clients

I know the PDF/UA-1 standard only requires column headers.
That's a shortcoming I'm hoping our ISO committee will be able to bring into the next edition, PDF/UA-2.

As a community, we need to get all of the accessibility standards on board with row headers.

Then, get our software manufacturers to automatically create the tools to do this. At this time MS Word and PowerPoint automatically set row headers as the programs' defaults, but Adobe InDesign fails here:

First, the designer must manually designate the row headers — there isn't an automatic default setting for them like in Word.
And second, there is no way for the designer to manually designate row headers.

That means row headers must be added after the PDF is exported. It's a gruesome task to fix tables, especially given that InDesign is often used to create long data-intensive documents with multi-page tables. Imagine setting row headers by hand for a 50-page table. O M G.

We need to tell Adobe and Microsoft what we need for accessible documents because they don't have a clue.

— — —
Bevi Chagnon | Designer, Accessibility Technician | <EMAIL REMOVED> — — —
PubCom: Technologists for Accessible Design + Publishing consulting ' training ' development ' design ' sec. 508 services Upcoming classes at www.PubCom.com/classes — — — Latest blog-newsletter – Simple Guide to Writing Alt-Text