axaio’s MadeToTag for Adobe InDesign with revised table feature

axaio software has released a major update version of its tool MadeToTag, an Adobe InDesign plug-in for generation and export of accessible PDF documents. Besides minor improvements, the table function has been generously revised in the new version 2.3.112 to optimise the usability of this popular MadeToTag feature.

MadeToTag step 6: The Table Structure

To enable navigation in tables, and thus a logically accessible representation of the table content, MadeToTag allows differentiated assignment of tags used for the table structure. This mainly concerns the definition of header cells, i.e. column or row headers, compared to normal cells. For easy visualisation, these are marked with the help of a colour highlighting:

Another table editing option is the Smart Header mode, which allows you to determine individually which cells are to be marked as headers. Starting from a selected table cell, complex cell associations can be defined in this way in order to make even widely related table contents correctly readable for, among others, screen readers. Also here, the visibility of the previously defined associations is emphasised for the user by coloured background highlighting:

Another advantage of MadeToTag's table function is the possibility to label a table as a layout table. Sometimes tables are used in the InDesign document simply as a layout aid, for design purposes and not to create an actual data table. To avoid these being mistakenly tagged as real data tables, you can define them as layout tables. This way the table does not show up in the document's tagging tree, which is essential for PDF/UA compliance.

Recently, there had been restrictions in the handling of the table function with certain documents. For example, partially wrong or not set cell colour highlighting caused impairments, which meant that the cell assignments were not clearly recognisable when tagging. With the currently introduced version 2.3.112, this step 6 in MadeToTag has been completely revised to guarantee reliable table processing.

The full list of release notes for the new MadeToTag version 2.3.112 can be found here.

30-days trial versions are available on our website.

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us: info@axaio.com