WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: PDFs that read one word per line

for

From: Langum, Michael J
Date: Jan 29, 2010 1:06PM

Geof says:
"just want to be able to say with certainty if a pdf is tagged properly when I need to."

Mike Replies:
The issue of "proper" tagging is a bit tricky. I suspect we all understand that there are may be more than one way to represent the structure of a document. I.e.
* how deep should the heading levels go?
* must a set of term/definition pairs be structured in a two column data table?
* etc.

The key is to ensure that authors (usually in MS Word) are properly trained in:
* the use of word styles (to set heading levels),
* adding column head structure to tables,
* adding alternate text to graphics images,
* avoiding text boxes (if possible)

The very BEST thing about CommonLook is the way it works with Tables. You can very quickly and easily set column and row heads to <th> tags with correct "scope" attributes. This feature alone is worth the cost.

-- Mike