Accessible tables - how to make headers read repeatedly

[jacobc42534807]

Hey,

I have an Adobe pro DC and I want To make tables accessible as per the standard.

As an example, I have made table below. I want to make it read as title says, i.g. Header1 -> Data 1, Header 2 -> Data 2, Header 3 -> Data 3, and again Header 1 -> Data 4, Header 2 ->Data 5...

To make Headers read again after each row. I think its more easy to understand tables.

Can you please help me to find some guidance or help how to do it? Thank you!

Header1	header 2	Header 3
Data 1	Data 2	Data 3
Data 4	Data 5	Data 6

[yn]

In Acrobat Pro, click the Accessibility Icon. Then click Reading Order from the list that opens. Reading Order should open a popup and slightly modify your layout view. You will now see a block "X" over your table to visually ID the table as a table. You should also now see the individual  table cells framed and numbered.

Right-click anywhere in the table area and choose Table Editor.

This should change the color and view of the table element. Now, you should see several TH and TD labels. Ideally, you would see the top row cells with IDs of TH (Table Headers) and those header cells should be highlighted in red. Body cells should now show the label TD (Table Data) and highlighted as gray. It is possible that you may not have any TH labelled header cells and everything is labelled as TD only. If so, that means that you did not assign a Header Row in your working file (Word or InDesign). That should be fine, as you can define all of this in the next step.

Right-click the first header cell (Header 1 in your example) and choose Table Cell Properties. This will open a pop-up.

If the table was correctly set up in your working file to have a formal header row, then under Type you should see that Header Cell is selected. If not, then you can select it now (make sure that you are editing what needs to be a header cell, of course, and not a data cell). Once Header Cell is selected, choose Column from the Scope drop down menu. This will associate the column under the cell with this specific header. Note: if you have headers on the left of each row and wanted to associate data cells to those, you would repeat this step for those row headers as well, but selecting Row in the Scope drop down. Click OK and repeat for each Table Header cell to create the remaining associations.

Click OK.

Save the file to confirm the edits are applied then test the PDF in your screen reader. NVDA is free. Listening through your reader, you should now hear something like, "Row 1, Header 1 -> Row 3, Data 4" as you were describing.

Good luck