WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Accessible "save as PDF" plug ins for Word on OSX

for

From: Karlen Communications
Date: Jan 7, 2011 11:45AM


For both Office 2007 and 2010 using either the save as PDF add-in or the now
built-in save as PDF functionality you can create a tagged PDF. There is a
check box in the PDF options once you choose to save the document as a PDF
that should be checked by default to Tag the document. You will have to
check the check box to create Bookmarks from headings.

There is only one major issue I've come across which is one that is common
to both Acrobat 9 and X and the save as PDF add-in which is based on the
same PDF specs. If Your document has images in it, all <Figure> Tags will
get put at the top or near the top of the Tags Tree instead of their logical
place in the document. In addition if you look in the Order Panel images are
always the last item in the page order rather than their logical place on
the page. Adobe knows about this bug as does Microsoft.

Thank heaven I always put captions on images as this lets me relegate the
images to Artifacts which takes less time than dragging the Tags around the
Tags Tree.

Other than that I've used the save as PDF add-in for both Office 2007 and
2010 to create tagged PDF documents. No problems in retaining structure that
is present in my source documents.

I'd be curious to know more about the forms issue. Word should be used to
create the template for the form as Word form controls do not convert to PDF
form controls...this has always been the case.

Cheers, Karen