The ISO has designated the PDF Association ( as the manager/developer of the standard.Įveryone else, including my own firm, is merely interpreting the standards. There is only one entity that sets the PDF accessibility standards: The ISO (International Standards Organization). And they may not have updated their testing standards or the tests themselves, either. You get THEIR version of accessibility that may or may not jive with either the standards or with the needs of end-users. GeestĪnd that's one of the problems when you purchase or use a corporate service/software for accessibility.

Problem here is that checkers like PAC3/PAC2021, Axes PDF or Commonlook will stil flag a missing Table summary. That greatly improves accessibility, not Alt-text. Make a better table and put a visible caption before it. Table summaries are no longer required, mainly because they are buried inside the tag and aren't usually visible to those who don't use a screen reader.Place it before the tag so that all users, whether they use an AT or not, can read your guidance before they get knee-deep into the table itself. Table (aka, prefatory text) can be very helpful for complex or long tables.Nice to put them on row headers, too, but not required by the standards at this time. Have a good, logical, structure of rows and columns.

Instead, make your tables accessible with these techniques: So don't waste your time on Alt-text on Tables. Good intentions, but doesn't work in the end. It was an idea from 15 years ago that is now being deprecated by Microsoft and others. What would the Alt-text state - this is a table with 6 columns and 20 rows? They already know that from their assistive technology (AT). And Alt-text on tables is not required, doesn't add any assistance to those using screen readers, and isn't recognized by any assistive technologies we've tested.

Open source alternative to indesign