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Re: PDF Accessibility

for

From: Steve Green
Date: Jan 19, 2010 1:12PM

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Hull, Larry G.
(GSFC-750.0)[GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER]
Sent: 19 January 2010 19:57
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] PDF Accessibility

Hi Geof,

You are correct. I had assumed a PDF document on PDF Accessibility would be
assessable. Bad assumption. The document isn't even tagged.


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Actually the document is tagged - I have just been looking at the tag tree
trying to figure out why the document reads so badly in JAWS 9.

JAWS 9 only recognises two headings, which is insufficient for a 46-page
document. There are lots of tags called something like <header 3>, and it is
possible that some screen reader versions recognise this as a heading, but
JAWS 9 does not. As a result there is effectively no semantic structure in
the entire document.

JAWS 9 also cannot read any of the contents of the data tables - it just
says 'table containing x columns and y rows' followed by 'table end'. This
is really weird because the content is in the tag tree but it is marked up
in a deep set of nested tags. Someone has tried to create an ordered list
spanning multiple table cells, but it just doesn't work.

Steve Gren
Director
Test Partners Ltd