Making tables that can be tagged

[sbreitbart-NOAA]

Over the past few months, @Schiano-NOAA and I have done extensive testing to figure out how to create asar-based reports that pass Section 508 accessibility criteria. One of the major roadblocks? Tables that could be tagged.

🎉 The good news is that, as of asar version 1.6.0., asar reports meet the NOAA "Big 5" Section 508 compliance requirements- and offer even more accessibility features!

A key realization that enabled us to reach this point was that the flextable package- which stockplotr tables had been based in- seems to be one of the only packages that produces tables that, when translated into LaTeX via Pandoc, cannot be tagged with tagpdf. As we've found success with other packages like gt and kableExtra, we are changing the basis of stockplotr tables from flextable to gt.

🚨So, if you're creating your own tables, we advise avoiding flextable at this time.🚨

Raw LaTeX tables pose the least issues when compiling asar reports. Next best are gt and kableExtra, though the Adobe Accessibility Check flags for issues with headers (which can be resolved). Please check out the "a11y-sandbox" repository README for findings related to differences in tagging behavior for tables produced with these packages, how to fix the header issue, and a summary of testing findings. If you care to dig deeper, the repository contains many examples of features and table types that were tested for success in tagging, passing Adobe Accessibility Checker tests, and more.

If you have trouble creating tables created with packages besides flextable, we'd be happy to help!

[kellijohnson-NOAA]

@davidgohel first thank you for making {flextable}, we really enjoy using it to produce tables within our quarto documents. Unfortunately, we have come to a roadblock that stops us from continuing to use your excellent package because we cannot make the resulting tables accessible to those with disabilities when we produce pdf documents. We want to bring this observation to your attention in case you have time to talk about it. We are happy to provide some reproducible examples if you wish.