Unable to reach some cells in table using Ctrl Alt Arrow keys

Question

Hi all

I have a complex table as below in a PDF which needs to be remediated.

I am facing a problem when read out with Screen reader (NVDA).

I have set the scope and ColSpan/RowSpan for different headers here.

For 'ROw total' column header set scope to COlumn and RowSpan to 4.

For 'Race/Ethnicity' set colspan to 14. SImilarly for others

When i am using NVDA to read it i experience the below announcements:

1. Ctrl Alt Arrow keys : I reach 'Row Total' Cell. Then press Ctrl Alt down arrow. It announces as Edge of table, but does not announce the 11 seen in cell below.

I reach 'Race/Ethnicity' cell and press Ctrl Alt right arrow, it announces 'Row Total'. But once i am on cell 'Not Hispanic or Latino' or on 'Female', pressing Ctrl Alt right does not announce 'Row total' but says 'Edge of Table'.

2. DOwn arrow navigation: Once we reach cells 11 or 22 or 33, they are announced as COlumn 17 though there are only 16 columns in table. Cells just before 11 or 22 or 33 are announced as Column 15. Column 16 is not announced in these 3 rows. However cells below 33 i.e 44, 55 and so on are announced as Column 16 and also Ctrl Alt arrow keys work to announce them.

Can some one please let me know what could be going wrong here.

@hammer0909 Could also take a look and let me know what can done to fix the announcement here.

Please let me know if more details are needed from my end.

Thanks

hammer0909 · Answer

I recreated your table and I see what you're talking about. To be honest I think you're dealing with a combination of the complexity of the table and a failure with NVDA. If you start in the top left corner of the table and navigate down to "Executive Senior Level Officials and Managers" and then move across, you get to the "11" cell you were trying to get to earlier and it does read it appropriately. Another failure of NVDA is when you have empty table cells, NVDA can get lost and mis-announce the wrong heading to the wrong cell. It didn't do that in my table that I've attached I think because I used Header/Cell ID associations instead of simply scope for the header cells. It provides a more robust experience I think.

I am experiencing much of what you're describing though, and it seems that the cells to which another cell spans is ignored by NVDA and doesn't recognize that there is a cell there. You have to navigate further down on the left side of the table in order to be able to read all of the cells. It's possible, just not in the way that we're thinking.

To be honest, this is definitely a complex table. As you can see in my attached document, it works, just not perfectly. If possible, my suggesion would be to try to simplify this table or break it into multiple tables. You're trying to convey a lot of information in one table and I think you're just running into inherent failures.

I hope that helps!

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