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Re: PowerPoint accessibility-alt question

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From: Duff Johnson
Date: Apr 29, 2014 3:12PM

> On the subject of Mac OS conversion of Word/PowerPoint files to PDFs, we've noticed another problem that is related (I think) to the unicode font issue - i.e., the PDF rendering wants to use unicode font and if it can't find a font set that matches the one in the original document, it substitutes different symbol and letter combinations for some characters in the resultant PDF. This can make some words unintelligible if you're listening to the PDF with a screen reader.
> In our experience, it seems to happen most frequently with PDFs that are created on a Mac. We would love to give instructors and faculty members some simple instructions on how to avoid this problem - does anyone has any guidance on which fonts to use and which to avoid when creating MS Office documents on a Mac?

The issue is: fonts must be embedded when the file is created. This applies for files created on any platform.

For the Mac, this thread provides some tips to addressing the issue:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2803119

I hope this helps.

Duff.