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Re: Easier way to artifact repeated header row for multi-pagetables in PDFs

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From: Steve Green
Date: Feb 15, 2023 1:30PM

It Is not necessarily a good idea to artifact those repeated headings. There are at least a couple of considerations and our team could not agree on a "correct" answer when we discussed the topic recently.

1. If a screen reader reads all the pages continuously, it may be confusing to keep hearing repeated column headers.

2. If the document is long, JAWS automatically switches into a mode where it only reads one page at a time. In this mode the lack of column headers on each page may be confusing.

To complicate matters, users can change the number of pages at which JAWS considers a document to be long, or they may disable the feature completely. Different users may therefore have different experiences. I believe the default setting is 50 pages.

If you do decide to artifact the repeated headers I don't know of an efficient way to do it.

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd


-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Elizabeth Thomas
Sent: 15 February 2023 19:22
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: [WebAIM] Easier way to artifact repeated header row for multi-page tables in PDFs

This seems to be my week for PDF questions. I did try to find the answer online, but was unsuccessful. And all the PDF experts seem to be on this list, so I thought I would ask here.
Is there an easy (or automated) way to artifact the repeated header row for a multi-page table in a PDF? I know how to manually do it, but I do a lot of Finance docs with super long tables (e.g., 46 pages), so was wondering if there was an easier, automated way. It’s super tedious to artifact the header row for 45 pages; there has to be a better way. Maybe an API? Does CommonLook make it easier?
Thanks in advance.
-Elizabeth Thomas
Digital Accessibility Specialist, NJ Department of Education