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Re: Blank pages in PDFs

for

From: Jonathan Metz
Date: Apr 16, 2013 6:52AM

I'm just curious, but couldn't the issue of blank pages and page numbering be solved by renumbering the pages in Acrobat? If you remove the blank page 4 so it skips from page 3 to 5, why not just start a new section starting at page 5?

Thanks,
Jonathan Metz

From: Pratik Patel < <EMAIL REMOVED> <mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> >>
Reply-To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> <mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> >>
Date: Friday, April 5, 2013 6:33 AM
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List' < <EMAIL REMOVED> <mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> >>
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Blank pages in PDFs

Whenever possible, I advocate for less verbiage. In this case, the
individual looking at the PDF file has the ability (or should have the
ability) to query the metadata from Adobe Reader. This being the case, I do
not recommend adding additional verbiage that indicates that the page is
blank.

Pratik Patel
Founder and CEO, EZFire
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From: Karlen Communications < <EMAIL REMOVED> <mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> >>
Reply-To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> <mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> >>
Date: Friday, April 5, 2013 6:25 AM
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List' < <EMAIL REMOVED> <mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> >>
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Blank pages in PDFs

I think of blank pages as decorative images and really don't want to spend
time hearing "page X, blank page" over and over again. I should be able to
use Bookmarks, headings and a linked Table of Contents to get to content and
use Ctrl + Shift + N in Acrobat to get to a specific page.

I appreciate that someone tagging a PDF has thought about this and decided
to put blank pages as Artifacts.

I do occasionally use screen magnification and having some vision is not a
good enough argument to tag decorative content - which is what the insertion
of a blank page is.

Cheers, Karen
-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> <mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> >
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Jennifer Sutton
Sent: Thursday, April 4, 2013 5:15 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Blank pages in PDFs

In my view, blank pages should be left in. What if I'm using this book for
research, and I need to cite page numbers?

Sometimes, I think that catering for AT can be taken to extremes. AT users
should know how to read these files and expect potentially blank pages, just
as these exist in printed, brailled, or other electronic books. If you have
low vision users who are initially confused, then I would hope they have the
AT strategies to unconfuse themselves by paging down to see what comes next.

Jennifer

At 01:33 PM 4/4/2013, you wrote:
What prompted my question was that when testing PDFs with blind and
low-vision users, some page up/down by page. If I remember correctly,
these were probably low-vision users.

Navigating to, say, page 4 and not finding any text on it, would that
be an impairment to the user?
Would it cause confusion if the user's AT couldn't find any content on
that page?

-Bevi
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-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> <mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> >
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Duff Johnson

Bevi,
I'm not aware of guidelines on this specific point. Zero content means
zero content.
PDF/UA is silent on this question. Fully blank (zero content) pages
exist from an AT point of view only in the sense that they cause the
PDF to be longer by a page. When such a page is displayed a user could
query the PageLabel to find out (for example) that the blank page was the
4th of 18.
This is notionally useful information - at least - it's equivalent
information to that which is available to other users.

On Apr 4, 2013, at 3:19 PM, Chagnon | PubCom < <EMAIL REMOVED> <mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> >> wrote:
> We're processing some PDFs for a government client and the books
> have blank pages between chapters. These are to force new chapters
> to start on right-hand pages in the printed version.
>
> Is there any guideline or "best practice" for identifying these
> blank pages to blind readers?

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