Ways to fix table structure tags in adobe acrobat

Question

So I’m taking a report created in Microsoft Word and converted to PDF and I’m finalizing it by optimizing it to be fully ADA compliant for WCAG 2.1 AA. I’m having trouble though with the table tags as it’s throwing inconsistency errors. Usually this is something simple like one cell spans multiple columns and I just have to go in an manually say the cell spans 3 columns or such. However one table for whatever reason I can’t figure out doesn’t render anywhere near the correct fashion during the conversion to pdf. In the past I would delete the converted tag and just reedited it as a table and it works on the second time. Something about this table though it just doesn't work it combines all the header row into one and for the life of me I can’t find a way to manually tag the table as the auto function can’t understand it.

As you can see it’s treating the entire top row as one cell and for some reason things there is more to the table structure off the side of the page despite the fact that the table is set to 6.5 inches wide.

Table after trying to redo it in adobe acrobat pro

Lastly if I try to remove just the table structure it won’t let me retag the table at all. I highlight the table it doesn’t give me the option on the Reading Order to tag the highlighted section. Instead I have to clear the entire page structure so that I can retag just the table and when I do it does figure where again it things all the table headers are one big cell and now shows two more to the right again off page and outside the boundaries.

Any insight anyone can offer to help me be able to correctly tag this so it can be ada compliant is greatly appreciated.

Joseph29822415a4bg · Accepted Answer

Hi Tariq, Thanks for responding to me and I apologize for not responding back but in the rush to get it done and complete by the deadline I focused on that and missed your request.

To answer your ask there were some merged cells but that wasn’t what was causing the problems. There are many tables in the report and none of them did what this one was doing despite the fact they were all set up the same. What I was looking for was a way to manually edit the tables and fix the bad interpretations of the tags Adobe was putting in there. I was able to find that under the accessibility tags I could manually edit and rearrange the “html” tags that made up the table and make it look like the actual table on the page. It’s painfully slow and I wish they could provide us with better tools to manually fix and set these up but for now I have what I needed.

Tariq Ahmad Dar · Answer

Hello ​@Joseph29822415a4bg,Thanks for sharing the screenshots.From what is shown, this looks less like a tagging issue in Acrobat and more like a table structure issue that may be coming from the source document or occurring during PDF conversion.The table appears to contain several characteristics that can be challenging for automatic table recognition, including vertically rotated header text, merged cells, and a complex header row. In your screenshots, Acrobat is treating the entire top row as a single header cell (TH) rather than separate header cells, which typically indicates that the underlying structure is not being interpreted as distinct table cells.The additional cells appearing beyond the visible page area can also suggest that Acrobat is detecting hidden table elements, merged cells, floating objects, text boxes, or other structural content that is not obvious from the visual appearance of the table.A few things you may want to check:Review the original Word table for merged cells, hidden columns, nested tables, text boxes, or floating objects in the header area.If possible, recreate the header row using standard table cells rather than text boxes or positioned objects.Create a fresh PDF using the Acrobat PDFMaker add in rather than Print to PDF.Compare the results after running Autotag Document on a copy of the PDF.If you are comfortable sharing files, could you provide both the PDF and the original Word document? That would help determine whether the issue originates in the source file or during the PDF conversion process.If you prefer not to post the files publicly, feel free to send them via direct message instead.To send a Private Message - Click on Profile Avatar and on the profile page, you will see a button “Send message.”~Tariq

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