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Re: tagging PDF's

for

From: Bevi Chagnon
Date: Mar 22, 2012 11:51AM

Duff, your points are noted.

I'm not going to defend Reflow and other technologies that use the reading
order.

But I don't believe we have the luxury to ignore Reading Order, or tell
users that they shouldn't use the free Reflow utility in Acrobat and instead
should purchase and use another tool. Or tell users with older AT they must
upgrade, even when they can't afford the cost.

Sure, Reflow isn't a great tool for accessibility but it's free, it's easy
to learn, it satisfies the need for a certain portion of the population, and
senior and disability centers show their clients how to use it. As a
teacher, I've worked with many disabled users on a fixed income with little
money to spare. They have few alternatives so they'll do what most people do
-- use what's already there. Not a perfect solution, but it "suffices" for
them.

A better strategy is to acknowledge that the tool exists and people use it,
and therefore we should work with it as much as it is feasible to do so.
Since it takes just a few mouse clicks in the source document to clean up
most, if not all, of the reading order, I think it's worth the time to do
so. This is not hard to do in most InDesign layouts.


< Further, so-called AT depending on "reading order" is incapable (in
principle, not just in practice) of representing semantic structures such as
lists and tables. >

Semantic structure isn't as critical for those AT users who are fully
sighted. Helpful at times, but not as critical as for blind and low-vision
users.


< How fantastically embarrassing that InDesign is still so poor at PDF
production! How many years has it been since tagged PDF was released? >

Actually, InDesign isn't "so poor at PDF production." About 90% of the
problems I see are user errors (often untrained users who don't even use
paragraph styles to trigger semantic tags, let alone other layout
techniques). The other 10%, sure Adobe needs to work on those issues and
from what I understand, they're aware of at least the most important ones.

But I'm not here to defend Adobe, either. Just trying to clarify the
discussion.

--Bevi
--
Bevi Chagnon | <EMAIL REMOVED>
PubCom - Trainers, consultants, designers, and developers
Print, Web, Acrobat, XML, eBooks, and Federal Section 508
--
* It's our 30th Year! *


-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Duff Johnson
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2012 11:56 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] tagging PDF's

This issue is one of my bugbears, as some of you know all too well.

On Mar 22, 2012, at 9:41 AM, Bevi Chagnon wrote:

> Karen wrote: "While it is preferable to have both the Tags Panel and
> the Order Panel match up, adaptive technology reads through the Tags
> Tree so making sure it is correct is the goal."
>
> I've come across some AT (other than screen readers) that do use the
> PDF's Reading Order but I can't recall which ones off the top of my head.

So-called AT which uses "reading order" (better understood as: "painting
order" for reasons that I will be only too happy to explain again should it
be necessary) is relying on LUCK, no more, no less.

Further, so-called AT depending on "reading order" is incapable (in
principle, not just in practice) of representing semantic structures such as
lists and tables.

Consequently, there is no such thing as AT which uses "reading order" in PDF
unless you are also willing to consider a plain-text viewer as an AT for
web-pages.

A car will open a can of beans if you drive over the can _just_ right, but
(a) it will always make a mess and (b) this capability does not mean that a
car is a can-opener.

Likewise, with Acrobat Reflow we have software that offers a few people some
(very limited) success some (very limited) amount of the time. That does not
make it AT.

> Keep in mind that Acrobat's Reflow utility is one that follows the
> Reading Order, sort of. Reflow doesn't follow Reading Order precisely,
> but there is a definite correlation for most of the items on a PDF's
> page. I've learned that Reflow is being taught to low-vision users so
> that they can more easily enlarge text and navigate through a
multi-column PDF.

Acrobat's Reflow is a curse in no small part because it so RADICALLY muddied
the waters for users while being just (barely) useful enough to be plausible
from time-to-time (basically, as a function of the simplicity of the
document) that some have learned to live with it, regardless of how poor an
implementation it really is.

> Dana, in InDesign, you can control the PDF's RO through the Articles
> and Layers panels. The sequence in the Articles panel is top down,
> that is the top most item will be read first in the PDF's RO. In the
> Layers panel, it's the opposite: the bottom most item will be read first
in the PDF's RO.
>
> So put the 2 panels side-by-side on your monitor and try to get them
> to match up, top down and bottom up. It won't be perfect because the
> Layers panel will have more items in it than the Articles panel, but
> get as close as you can.

How fantastically embarrassing that InDesign is still so poor at PDF
production! How many years has it been since tagged PDF was released?

> One suggestion: minimize the number of layers used in InDesign to make
> it easier to rearrange the order of layout items. INDD is not
> Photoshop and most layouts don't need layers to create the visual
> design, but many designers have gotten into the habit of using them
unnecessarily.

.that, and tell Adobe to fix ID already!

Duff.