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Re: PDF, Accessibility and Quality Control

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From: Sean Keegan
Date: Jan 28, 2007 1:20AM

Hi Melanie,

> How vigilant are you that the tags used in the tagging, accurately
represent the
> content?

It depends on the process used to create the PDF documents. Many of the
people I have worked with are creating content from MS Word and so rely on
the tagging that results from the PDFMaker conversion in MS Word (so the
result is that instead of a "H1" tag you may have a "Heading 1" tag). For
those who work with InDesign or another application, my big focus is getting
the document creators to ensure a logical reading order to the document, add
descriptions to images and the like.

If time is not a critical issue and the PDF was not well-formed from the
start (i.e, no headings, etc.), then I do suggest using the TouchUp Reading
Order tool to reclassify the content where appropriate. While the TouchUp
tool is a major improvement to how things had to be done in earlier versions
of Acrobat, a proper workflow is a better option IMO as touching up even
short document can take more time.

In terms of QC/QA, I generally do not recommend the use of a specific
screen-reader as what works in screen-reader version "X" does not mean that
the same function will exist in version "Y" (makes for some tedious
testing!). I try out a few screen-readers when I am trying something new in
the PDF conversion process, but I have that luxury. The best results I have
had with respect to evaluating reading order is to save out a tagged PDF as
"Text(Accessible)" from the Save As... menu. You should get the proper text
flow and additional items that a screen-reader will also announce are
typically displayed in brackets. The drawback to this method is if data
tables are present (linearizes the data).

So, I would echo Andrew's question as to what is your workflow for PDF
document creation? Otherwise, your step 1 looks fine and if all you are
doing is spot checking, then I would try the Save As... and saving the PDF
as a Text(Accessible) file.

Take care,
Sean