RE: Inaccessibility of EN301-549 (PDF format) Standards for screen reader users

You are correct, Sailesh. There are accessibility issues throughout the document, especially the inappropriate use of tables to control layout, incorrect table cells marked as headers, missing "rowspan" attributes, lists broken across pages etc.

The table that starts on page 90 is horrible because it's got three levels of column headings. It's not possible to tag it correctly in Word and you can't even fix it with Acrobat's Table Editor because it doesn't work if cells contain rotated text. You have to add the required attributes to the Properties of each cell, but not many people know how to do that.

That said, I expect that screen reader users would still have a horrible experience even if the table was tagged correctly. The effective column header for some cells is the concatenation of the three rows of headers. This is very long and it is announced before the data in each cell when using table commands to navigate across a row.

If anyone is thinking of complaining to ETSI, remember that each individual must have their own license for the standard. It would be rather embarrassing if you submitted a complaint and they pointed out that you don't have a license.

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd


-----Original Message-----
From: Sailesh Panchang <spanchang02@gmail.com> 
Sent: 03 July 2022 19:54
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: Inaccessibility of EN301-549 (PDF format) Standards for screen reader users

Hello Listers,
I had highlighted the subject issue in 2019  but the issues still persist. So I followed up again just a few weeks ago by writing to ETSI.
For instance at present the data tables  in Annex A (A.1 and A.2) that start on page 90 of version 3.2.1 (March 2021) do not convey relationship between header cells and data cells.
The tables are not tagged to convey the column-span property. It appears the PDF is created by saving Word files as PDF and no further tagging is done.
So it is almost impossible to comprehend the table structure using a screen reader.
This problem would also be caught by testing with AT (if done) before the PDF is published publicly.
So it is important for users who depend on AT / accessibility features to write to ESPsupport@etsi.org, convey their experience and urge ETSI to make necessary changes.
It is not good that the standards  themselves pose accessibility problems.
Thanks,
Sailesh

Received on Monday, 4 July 2022 07:57:54 UTC