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Re: making footnotes accessible in PDF documents

for

From: Ryan E. Benson
Date: May 27, 2012 10:15PM

You are welcome.

> Writing "a good chunk of Javascript" is not a solution that's going
> to work for my client.
I didn't save the link I found, and this was a number of months ago so
my memory is a little fuzzy. I want to say you only had to write 5-10
lines of code, but it was per link.

> I suppose the "reading order" could be set to assure that relevant
> footnotes read after each paragraph to which they pertain, but I
> don't believe that's the preferred convention. And I would not be
> keen to somehow set the screen reader reading order to be different
> from the visual reading order (if that's even possible).
I would guess the convention would come down to the person who is
reading the document's preference. Back in college I would glance at
the footnote to see what it said. If I enjoyed the thing I was
reading, I would read through it, and go back to the body. If I knew
the author usually didn't say anything important and/or the professor
didn't think they were, I would simply ignore them. Re: visual vs
screen reader order: yes it is possible. It is kind of heard to
explain, but between the tag, order, page and maybe content panels you
can do that.

> It seems that I  should clarify that the PDF in question already
> exists, so it will not be a matter of converting from Word. This
> document is large, so it would be a waste of time to convert back to
> Word and recreate.
I would look at the panels I mentioned above, and tweak them as needed.

> What my client wants to do is to be able to generate PDF documents
> properly (using Adobe's tools), and at the moment, what's in question
> is how to implement footnotes.
I am not endorsing CommonLook's stuff, but it depends on what version
of Word you are using. In Office 2007, you have a tab added to the
ribbon if you have Acrobat installed. My evaluation of the output
gives you a PDF that is roughly 70% accessible. Using the 2010 save as
function, the percentage I get is usually somewhere in the 80s. With
PAW, that is usually 95%+. This is sort of relative because it is both
dependent on the document in question, and the checklist I use.


--
Ryan E. Benson


On Sat, May 26, 2012 at 5:45 PM, Jennifer Sutton < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Ryan et al:
>
> Thanks for your time and thoughts, Ryan.
>
> Writing "a good chunk of Javascript" is not a solution that's going
> to work for my client.
>
> I suppose the "reading order" could be set to assure that relevant
> footnotes read after each paragraph to which they pertain, but I
> don't believe that's the preferred convention. And I would not be
> keen to somehow set the screen reader reading order to be different
> from the visual reading order (if that's even possible).
>
> Honestly, this kind of footnote navigation is common on the Web and
> has been possible in ebooks for many years, now, so I'd think it'd be
> common in Adobe, since it's more and more being used to create ebooks
> which are likely to have footnotes at the bottom of each page.
>
> It seems that I  should clarify that the PDF in question already
> exists, so it will not be a matter of converting from Word. This
> document is large, so it would be a waste of time to convert back to
> Word and recreate.
>
> I doubt that my client is going to want to procure a separate
> software package to assist with remediation (sorry, Duff).
>
> What my client wants to do is to be able to generate PDF documents
> properly (using Adobe's tools), and at the moment, what's in question
> is how to implement footnotes.
>
> In case this is clearer than what I originally wrote, what I'd like
> to know, specifically, is:
>
> -- Is it possible to link a footnote at the bottom of a page with its
> corresponding text (in the document body) so as to give the user the
> choice to navigate between the two?
>
> -- If this kind of linked navigation is not possible, and I do want
> the notes at the bottom of the page (which is what the convention in
> the industry of my client is), what's the next best practice?
>
> I suppose one could bookmark one's place, read the note, and then
> return to reading the body text via the bookmark, but that seems like
> a work-around.
>
> If you read the Accessify Forum post I initially cited, you'll see
> that there are conflicting opinions about how this is to be done, and
> my hope is that, since 2008, Adobe may have made this easier.
>
> As I suggested earlier, I'd really love to see a PDF document in
> which footnotes are implemented in the best way that Adobe tools,
> alone, permit.
>
> Thanks, and I regret that this seems to require so much explanation.
> I hoped it'd be fairly simple.
>
> Jennifer
> <snip previous messages in thread>
>
> > >