UA1 Validator / PDF/UA-1 rules / 7.2-37

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 7.2-37 ISO 14289-1 Object: SETBody

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

TBody element may contain only TR elements

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"