Tables are a beautiful way to visually organize matrices of information. However, if you are creating PDFs with inaccessible tables, then the cleanup work can be a nightmare. This knowledge base article will help illustrate this process.
As mentioned in previous KB articles, your source file is king/supreme. So let's start there...For this example, I have a Word document with two tables. The first table is setup to with two rows. It is obvious that the first row contains the days of the week to serve as the table headers (TH) and the second row contains the hours of operation as table data (TD):
For a simple table like this, transferable accessibility is quite simple to achieve! With my table selected in Word, the Table Design tab will appear and I will have options specific to this object. I want to be sure and check the box in the top-left for Header Row:
Defining the Header Row will define these cells as TH in my PDF.
(Note: Using table templates are not necessary for accessibility, but may make the tables easier to follow for sighted users.)
The second table in this document is going to be a little more difficult to work with:
Complex Tables are to be avoided at all cost, because they will create 3 to 6 hours of work apiece for authors, developers, or remediators. Nonetheless, if you are not faint of heart and have some time to burn, the Complex Tables knowledge base article will help you understand the process a bit better and/or make you question whether you really need those complex tables.
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