Guides › How to

How to make tables in a PDF accessible

What a table needs

• Structure tags: Table › TR › TH/TD.
• Header cells: column headers (and row headers when the first column labels each row, such as fee names).
• Scope: each TH says whether it applies to a column or a row.
• Consistent rows: each row has the same number of cells, counting merged cells.
• A caption or nearby heading that says what the table is.

Common failures we see

• No header row. Many fee schedules have section titles (“PLANNING FEES”) but no “Item | Fee” header row. Screen readers then have nothing to announce.
• Uneven rows. Notes and footnotes typed into one wide cell make rows with different cell counts.
• Layout tables. Tables used to place text side by side. These should be tagged as normal text, not as a table.
• Huge single tables spanning many pages with repeated header rows tagged as data.

How to fix

1. At the source: in Excel or Word, add a real header row, mark it as a header (Word: Table Properties › Repeat as header row), avoid merged cells, and keep notes outside the table.
2. In the PDF: in Acrobat Pro, use the Table Editor in the Reading Order tool to set header cells and scope.
3. Automated: remediation tools detect tables and header rows. Check the result, especially when the source has no header row.

Checking

Listen with NVDA: move into the table, then use Ctrl+Alt+Arrow keys to move between cells. Each cell should be announced with its column header.

In our tests on city fee schedules, automated tagging got rows and values right; where the original had no header row, it used the section title as the header, which is understandable but not ideal. The report flags tables for review.