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Re: Semantics for Indicating Accessible Version of Files

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From: Moore, Michael
Date: Jan 28, 2009 9:35AM

<Cliff>
You know what would be a really great answer? To be able to marry the
image layer of one PDF with the text layer of another. That way the
accessible text layer could be added to the signed image layer, and we
could post just one file. But I'm not a programmer, so I have no idea
what it would entail to make that possible.
</Cliff>

<Mike>

Cliff,

The scenario that you describe is essentially what happens when you use
Adobe professional to create an accessible document from a scanned
version. You can run OCR over the original document and generate a
tagged pdf. It is usually necessary to perform a bit of clean up on the
converted document because the OCR is not 100% accurate. Images,
signatures and other items will also need to be tagged as graphics or
artifacts. If tagged as a graphic they will require alternative text.
Artifacts act like background images in html.

</Mike>