Hello Alan.  I use Window-Eyes 4.2 and Win XP.  Sttraight text PDF is, in
one sense, easier to read than previously when one had to jump through a
million hoops to get a text or html copy.  Now I can just click on a PDF
file and read it.  Of course I have to finish reading, exit Acrobat, and
reboot my computer to do anything afterwards.  I don't know whether this is
a problem with XP, Acrobat, Window-Eyes, or combinations of the above.  I
hear that Jaws works even less well and that even Sighted people without
screen readers find Acrobat unstable, but this is all hearsay.

I've never gotten a PDF file with a marked up table, so I haven't tried how
to navigate in such a thing yet.  However I just looked over the
Window-Eyes hot key list for the Acrobat set file and find nothing that
looks like the hot keys that GW Micro uses, for example in Excel, to
improve access to column and row headings.  If you want to send me a file
with such a table, I'd get into the context-sensitive help (which is
extremely useful in Window-Eyes) and find out whether there's anything
there.  I'd guess not, but...

John





At 12:44 PM 12/23/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>Hello screen reader mavens and web accessibility afficionados,
>
>I am trying to get a sense of the relative accessibility of data tables
>(not layout tables) in different web-based formats.
>
>When reading a tagged PDF file using the most recent versions of Jaws and
>Window-Eyes, are complex data tables as accessible as those written in
>HTML? Is it possible to craft a PDF data table that provides as much
>contextual information as an HTML table, e.g., headers for columns,
>headers for rows (when required), and so on?
>
>Overall, I know that HTML is much more accessible than PDF, both in terms
>of accessibility and number of people who can access it. But I need to
>understand the potential for accessible tagged PDF.
>
>Alan
>
>Alan Cantor
>Project Manager
>Strategic e-Government Implementation
>e-Government, OCCS
>416-212-1152
>[log in to unmask]

John Gardner
Professor and Director, Science Access Project
Department of Physics
Oregon State University
Corvallis, OR 97331-6507
tel: (541) 737 3278
FAX: (541) 737 1683
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
URL: http://dots.physics.orst.edu