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PDF accessibility repair question

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From: Sean Keegan
Date: Jun 23, 2011 11:21AM

I generally think I know what I am doing with PDF documents and
accessibility, but I am bit stumped on this one and would appreciate a kick
to the head (or other anatomical region):

I am working to tag PDF documents that were originally authored as MS
PowerPoint files for a poster display presentations (with no consideration
for accessibility) and converted to PDF using a Mac. I do not have access
to the original MS PowerPoint files. Aside from the annoying "z-index-type"
issues that have occurred when using the TouchUp Reading Order (TURO) Tool
to zone/mark the PDF documents, most of the files have been relatively
easily to repair for accessibility issues.

Unfortunately, I am encountering several PDF documents in which the TURO
Tool will not zone any of the text on the screen. It is text as I can
copy/paste the text from the document into a text application, but I cannot
actually zone a text block and get the blue highlight showing what text
content has been selected. Adding tags automatically as well as manually
has also failed. I have looked in the Content panel and there is no
information displayed in that panel view. Attempting to run Adobe Acrobat's
OCR process fails. I have also tried exporting the document as an Image
file (to then run through OmniPage), but I cannot export any derivative of
the PDF. There is no security on the document.

So, at this point, I have a PDF document with text on the screen, but cannot
use any of the accessibility tools (or any tool actually) to fix the
document for accessibility purposes. Has anyone else run into this sort of
document situation and found a solution for adding tags?

Take care,
Sean