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Tagging PDF Files / Adobe Acrobat 5.0

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From: Zwack, Melanie
Date: Jul 9, 2002 1:19PM



We are trying to determine how to correctly tag Adobe Acrobat Files. You had
written me before stating that when the Make Accessible Plug-in is used,
afterwards you need to "Know what to do" to clean up the code.

Can you let me know what this "Know what to do is?" I would greatly
appreciate your expert assistance with this matter!!

We are being asked by clients to make PDFs 508 accessible. We are currently
trying to determine what standards we should use.

For example, when we use the Make Accessible Plug-in -- It does a good job
-- very little clean-up is required. However, we have noticed the tagging is
not necessarily accurate. As in the case of listed items -- the tag may be a
<P> tag rather than a <LI> tag. Some times, one paragraph is broken apart as
seperate elements -- line by line -- rather than grouping the entire
paragraph element together. Despite all of this, the PDFs are working great
in Jaws. But, should we try to get all the tags to be accurate even though
it doesn't seem to affect the Jaws reader?

What we are trying to determine is whether we really need to repair all this
code and tag it perfectly, or is the fact that it reads the text properly
all that we should concern ourselves? If we just do the tagging to get the
PDF to work, it's a much, much less time consuming process.

However, for our clients, asking for PDFs to be 508 compliant, would just
getting it to work even be acceptable?

Thanks in advance for any input on this matter!!


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