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Re: A better PDF editor for accessibility?

for

From: Olaf Drümmer
Date: Jun 11, 2013 11:38AM

Hi Jonathan,

we all have to choose which battle we are going to fight in the long run:

- waste precious resources on outdated provisions

- focus on being efficient (good effort result ratio) and effective (achieve the actual goal = make as much content as accessible to as many people as possible)


I consider any guidelines that try to enforce "TUROT reading order" (while they are understandable from a history point of view) to be highly irresponsible, as they enforce counterproductive use of resources that are scarce already.


Olaf


On 11 Jun 2013, at 18:48, Jonathan Metz wrote:

> Unfortunately for many of us, we don’t have the luxury of selecting one
> set of guidelines based on the type of software something is. I think this
> would be both awesome and horrible, but that’s a conversation for another
> day. :)
>
> As Duff pointed out, it’s intended for people who are using something that
> doesn’t understand tags. One could argue that this is necessary to conform
> to many provisions of Section 508 here in the US, such as 1194.21 (d), .22
> (d), .31 (a). Both the Veteran’s Administration (VA) and Health and Human
> Services (HHS) discuss these requirements in their PDF checklists (VA:
> 1194.31 (a.18), 1194.22 (d.21) and HHS: 1.0 (12) and 3.0 (22)).
>
> Further, one could argue that this has something to do with WCAG 2.0
> (1.3.2 Meaningful Sequence).
>
> I don’t think that it’s an unnecessary step. While it seems logical to
> think that we’re pulling out our hair for “old tech”, a perfect example
> happened to me only a couple years ago. When I tried to make a subway map
> accessible, John Brandt from jebsweb was nice enough to point out that he
> wasn’t able to use the Reading Order to make any sense of it since he was
> using Preview. I don’t use Preview, but I think that it still can’t
> understand tags. That’s a pretty common tech that falls under this
> category.
>
> Jonathan
>
>
>
>
>
> On 6/11/13 11:50 AM, "Olaf Drümmer" < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
>> According the PDF/UA standard, it is only the content order as defined in
>> the tagging structure that counts.
>>
>> The relevance of Touch Up Reading Order Tool (TUROT) is essentially a
>> thing of the past, and only served to compensate for a not well
>> implemented feature known as reflow in Acrobat / Adobe Reader. As it is
>> failing to be useful most of the time anyway once you use it for
>> non-trivial page content - TUROT order in place or not - it is not really
>> worth taking into account anymore.
>>
>> Today's noteworthy reflow tools only look at the tagging order (check out
>> callas pdfGoHTML as one option, or check out the upcoming PDF reader for
>> visually impaired people, from one of the Swiss organisations for blind
>> and visually impaired people -
>> http://www.szb.ch/presse/mitteilungen/erster-pdf-reader-fuer-sehbehinderte
>> .html in German - use
>> http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A//www.szb.ch/presse/mitteil
>> ungen/erster-pdf-reader-fuer-sehbehinderte.html&hl=en&langpair=auto|en&tbb
>> =1&ie=UTF-8 as a Google Translate based rough translation - scheduled to
>> ship June 24, 2013, for Mac and Windows, free of charge, and supposedly
>> going to be available in German, French, Italian and English).
>>
>> So say bye-bye to TUROT and Acrobat reflow, focus on getting your tagging
>> order right and have a productive life again, and use PDF reading tools
>> that work well...
>>
>> Olaf
>>
>>
>> On 11 Jun 2013, at 17:19, Jonathan Metz wrote:
>>
>>> It happens when not using TUROT too. If a user moves content around in
>>> the
>>> Reading Order (RO), then tags get moved around as well. If a user
>>> mistakenly moves content up (instead of down) in the RO, then they run
>>> into another issue of having content physically hidden in the real
>>> content
>>> of the page (does this section have a technical name?).
>>>
>>> I always been told that making adjustments to the Reading Order was an
>>> essential part of fixing a page. Are you saying that the reading order
>>> not
>>> matter then, if we just focus on the tags? This goes against everything
>>> I¹ve learned in marking up a page.
>>>
>>> I¹ve sort of approached the Reading Order panel as knowing the best way
>>> to
>>> adjust the content on that page before ever opening the Tags Panel
>>> (unless
>>> there are elements that should not have been made tags like with what
>>> happens typically with PowerPoint slides).
>>>
>>>
>>> Jonathan
>>>
>>> On 6/11/13 10:53 AM, "Duff Johnson" < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>>>
>>>>> ... I attempted
>>>>> to fix the reading order manually and ran into two recurring issues.
>>>>>
>>>>> 1. I'd be in the process of changing the order, and then suddenly
>>>>> tags I
>>>>> already moved, would rearrange themselves.
>>>>
>>>> Almost certainly, because you were making adjustments using the Touch
>>>> Up
>>>> Reading Order Tool (TUROT) after having made changes using the Tags
>>>> panel.
>>>>
>>>> This sort of procedure is a no-no because the Touch Up Reading Order
>>>> Tool
>>>> modifies both content reading order and tags simultaneously.
>>>>
>>>> If you do use the TUROT then you pretty much have to do a 2nd pass in
>>>> the
>>>> tags panel to clean up the problems you've induced with the TUROT.
>>>>
>>>> I generally advise users to avoid this tool, especially on very complex
>>>> pages, and focus on the tags instead.
>>>>
>>>> Duff.
>>>> >>>> >>>> >>>
>>> >>> >>> >>
>> >> >> >
> > >