UA1 Validator / PDF/UA-1 rules / 7.2-16

PDF/UA-1 · CLAUSE 7.2

Table structure is invalid

The table tags do not follow the required hierarchy (Table > THead/TBody/TFoot > TR > TH/TD), or the grid is irregular: rows with differing column counts, overlapping cells, or misplaced captions.

Rule 7.2-16 ISO 14289-1 Object: SETable

Why it matters

Screen reader users navigate tables cell by cell and rely on the row and column structure to stay oriented. A broken grid makes the data unreadable in a table reading mode.

How to fix it

  • Open the Tags panel and confirm the nesting: every TR sits directly inside Table, THead, TBody, or TFoot, and every TH/TD sits inside a TR.
  • Fix merged and split cells so that RowSpan and ColSpan account for every position in the grid.
  • Rebuild badly converted tables in the source document rather than repairing tag by tag; layout tables that carry no data should be marked as artifacts instead.
WCAG 1.3.1 Info and Relationships (A)

What the standard says

Table element may contain a Caption element as its first or last kid

Check your own PDF

Validate a file against PDF/UA-1 and see whether this rule fails in your document.

Open the validator Automate in CI 
curl -sS -X POST "https://api.ua1.dev/api/validate?format=compact&profile=ua1" \
  -F "file=@document.pdf"