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From: Alan Zaitchik
Date: Fri, Jul 07 2017 4:45PM
Subject: Irregular table woes
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I am working on a PDF that is essentially just a very long table. The PDF
was created from either Word or Excel...  I cannot tell and have no access to
the original.
My problem is that the table appears visually to have 6 columns, where the
6th column is empty. There is not even a TH at its head. There are 5 TH
tags in the first row and 5 TD tags in every subsequent row. (Mind you, I
am not 100% certain that there are 6 column in the table, but it seems to
be so.
When I check for Accessibility in Acrobat it tells the that the table
fails the Regularity requirement. I assume it somehow has to do with the
6th column and the absence of a tag for that column in each row.
This is a really looooooong table, and the thought of going through it
manually adding an empty <TD> to each row doesn't thrill me. But what's
worse, I wonder if this is doing the AT user any favor. The phantom 6th
cell of each row is always going to be empty.
It would be nice if I could just 'drop the 6th column' from within Acrobat
using the Edit Page option, but I have not been able to do that. Searching
on the web turned up contradictory pieces of advice, and in the end none
of them worked for me.
So which is worse? Leaving the table 'irregular' or manually adding an
empty 6th cell to each row?
I suppose there is the option of setting the 5th cell in each row to have
a column span of 2 but doesn't that offend against some other rule?
All suggestions are welcome!
A

From: Philip Kiff
Date: Sun, Jul 09 2017 10:03AM
Subject: Re: Irregular table woes
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The regularity test in Acrobat looks only at the tags, not at what you
may see visually. If your table has 5 <TH>'s in the first row and then 5
<TD>'s in every subsequent row, and no row/column spans, then it should
not be irregular. There is no point adding a blank extra column by
inserting a blank <TH> at the top and then a blank <TD> to every row. If
the table is irregular now and you add a single item to each row, then
it will still be irregular when you finish. And as you suggest, the
blank column will potentially confuse users of assistive technology.

I suspect that one or more cells has already been marked incorrectly as
spanning 2 or more columns or rows and that is why the table is being
flagged as irregular.

To fix the table tags, I wouldn't use the Edit page function, but
instead try first to use the "Table Editor" that you can activate from
the "Touch Up Reading Order" tool when you have a table cell selected.
Sometimes that editor won't even start with an irregular table, but if
it does, then you can visually inspect the red lines it shows and see if
that helps you figure out which cell(s) may be causing problems. Check
the header row(s) in particular. If that doesn't help, you can use the
Table Editor to select ALL the cells in the table (or perhaps one page
at a time) by holding the SHIFT key while you click on each cell within
the red borders. The right-click or context menu will then allow you to
set properties for all selected cells at once. Set all the Row Span and
Column Span properties to 1. Repeat for each page of the table. See if
that eliminates the irregularity.

Alternatively, you can try using the Preview function of the free PDF
Accessibility Checker (PAC) tool. I find it helpful in pinpointing the
specific rows or cells that are causing the regularity test to fail. And
then you can manually edit tag properties in Acrobat's to fix row or col
span values.

Phil.