WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: More PDF remediation questions (was RE: Use of Headings)

for

From: Karlen Communications
Date: Jul 28, 2010 4:27AM

You can compress layers in desktop publishing applications however Adobe
reader and Acrobat still see the layers which is why I think the problem
exists. The best solution is the same as in Word or PowerPoint documents:
use good design techniques and the tools in the application to put the
structure into the source document.

For the multilayer documents I've worked with there has been no real reason
for 5 or more layers except that the person who was revising the document
didn't quite understand how to get last year's version updated so added this
year's layer of information to cover last year's. Sound familiar?

I have noticed that the fewer the layers the better the document in terms of
tagging and these types of repairs. I don't see this problem as much in two
layer documents but still recommend using the text layer only as Adobe
recommends.

I try to work with clients as they are getting their publishing houses to
work on the documents and provide the techniques for eliminating this but it
is not always possible.

Cheers, Karen

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of
<EMAIL REMOVED>
Sent: July-27-10 5:36 PM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] More PDF remediation questions (was RE: Use of
Headings)

Is it possible to flatten everything to a single layer in InDesign and/or
Quark before publishing to PDF? Or would that have the effect of moving text
into figure tags?

Mike Moore
(512) 424-4159


-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Karlen
Communications
Sent: Tuesday, July 27, 2010 3:59 PM
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List'
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] More PDF remediation questions (was RE: Use of
Headings)

Yes and I've seen it in Word documents as well. In desktop publishing
documents that come from InDesign or Quark it is generally due to the number
of layers in the document. This is one of the reasons Adobe recommends only
using the text layer.

This will also happen sometimes when you try to repair the Tags in the Tags
Tree for a multi-layer document.

The remediation is to basically try to rearrange the layers of Phylo pastry
into their correct order. :-) Without causing other layers to disappear.
This gets extremely difficult in a document with more than 4 or 5 layers of
content.

Cheers, Karen

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of
<EMAIL REMOVED>
Sent: July-27-10 3:20 PM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: [WebAIM] More PDF remediation questions (was RE: Use of Headings)

Hi Karen,

While we have you on the line I have a question about content visually
disappearing when moving items in the order panel to fix reading order
issues. We saw this on a document that was created in InDesign. The person
who brought the document to us reported that they frequently encounter this
issue when working with PDFs created with InDesign and with Quark (sp?).
Have you seen this? And do you know how to work around this problem?

Mike Moore