Hi Ben,

Thank you for checking this again. Until you said it worked for you, I also thought that the table alt text and the description might not be included in the PDF export. Now I know I can stop looking for what might be wrong on my side. :)

Still, it would be interesting to know if it is that he tags are not included in the PDF or if NVDA just doesn't support this in pdf...

Also thank you for your suggestions for a workaround.

By the way, I'm also dealing with PowerPoint documents where alt text for tables also either is not exported to PDF or doesn't work with NVDA. Maybe, just out of curiosity, I'll contact Microsoft about it just to see if they aware of this.

Thanks again.

Regards

Sandra

Hi Sandra

 

I’m really sorry. I just read your reply and checked again.

 

What I didn’t notice during my quick look yesterday is that my Adobe Acrobat Reader DC 64 was immediately crashing when I opened the PDF I’d just created and I was being placed back in the Word document. Therefore, I was hearing the table title and long description, but I was back in Word. Please excuse me.

 

I haven’t been able to review the issue today because I can’t get my Acrobat Reader DC 64 to run while NVDA or Narrator is running. I’ve tried on two machines.

 

Interested to know if anyone else has any feedback or suggestions. However, if you have the accessibility tags checked, I’ll bet it’s an export limitation.

 

As an effective work-around, you could place the table title above the table using the appropriate heading level. This will enable easy navigation and a clear indication of the information that follows. If a long description is require to ensure the user will understand the table, place this in-between the heading and the table. That way, you can be sure it will be easily accessible for everyone.

 

Cheers

 

Ben

 

From: nvda@nvda.groups.io <nvda@nvda.groups.io> On Behalf Of Sandra Pilz
Sent: Saturday, 17 April 2021 6:30 PM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] PDF: Alternate Text and Description of tables

 

Hi Ben,

 

Thanks for checking this for me.

 

However, I do have the accessibility tags option checked. I have updated both Office and Acrobat Reader DC. I am also using Office 365

 

I have now opened the exported PDF in Word again to see if word would still show the alt text and the table description. It didn't. It didn't even show the heading of the document, this is the main heading not a header of the table. However, the heading was present in Acrobat Reader, so I don't really understand what's going on here...

 

Do you have any idea what else I might check?

 

Thank you.

 

Regards

 

Sandra

Am 16.04.2021 um 22:37 schrieb benmoxey@...:

Hi Sandra

 

I just tested this and the alt text title and long description for the table are present in the PDF.

 

In the export options, ensure “Document structure tags for accessibility” is checked. Note that I am using Microsoft 365, so the tags added to the PDF may have been enhanced since 2016.

 

Regarding the long description, if this information is essential for the user to understand the table’s contents, I recommend including it in the main body of the document, above the table. Many screen reader users will not know how to access the long description, so this approach ensures the information is easy to find.

 

Cheers

 

Ben

 

From: nvda@nvda.groups.io <nvda@nvda.groups.io> On Behalf Of Sandra Pilz
Sent: Saturday, 17 April 2021 2:47 AM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: [nvda] PDF: Alternive Text and Desciption of tables

 

Hello,

 

I have written a Word Document which has a table. In the table properties, I have added an alternative text and a description of the table. When I read the table in Word, NVDA will read the alternative text as well as the description. When I export the document to PDF, NVDA will neither read the alternative text nor the description. Is this because NVDA doesn't support this in Adobe DC, or is it that Word doesn't include the alternative text and table description?

 

The same is true for tables created in PowerPoint, when the files are exported to PDF.

 

Regards

 

Sandra