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Re: Graphical heading & Alt-text

for

From: Jonathan Metz
Date: Jul 15, 2013 3:05PM

Hi Bevi,

Just in case I totally misunderstand you I thoroughly apologize. I was up
really late last night on my new computer playing Batman:Arkham City.


>
>The bigger problem we have with Adobe InDesign is that it lacks the tool
>to
>put Actual text on a graphic.
>
>- It has a tool to pub alt-text on graphics, but not actual text.
>
>- It has a really cool tool to automatically draw the graphic's XMP meta
>data information and drop it into the Alt-text field, but not the actual
>text metadata.

In the Object Export Dialog box of CS5.5 to current, under the tab ³Tagged
PDF² Actual Text Source can choose from XMP:Title, XMP:Description, and
XMP:Headline, as well as any other XMP Property.

>
>- It doesn't even have either Alt-text or Actual Text metadata XMP fields,
>so the "title" or "description" XMP fields are borrowed. This is a huge
>problem for government databases with millions of photos that have already
>used the "title" and "description" fields for what they should be used
>for,
>not accessible Alt-text and Actual text. In most cases, the description
>of a
>photo is not the same as its Alt-text.

So make them. I haven¹t actually done this, but it looks pretty cool:
http://gunar.wordpress.com/2010/05/19/create-custom-metadata-panels-in-cs5-
with-xml/

>
>And with Acrobat, it's built-in accessibility checker will flag a graphic
>as
>an error if it has only Actual text on it, not Alt-text. So expect to see
>more PDFs with both Actual and Alt text on the graphics.

Based on a question I posed a while ago about Actual Text and Alternate
Text, Andrew Kirkpatrick had an awesome explanation (Thanks Andrew, if
you¹re reading this!):

"The primary distinction is that when a figure has actual text that figure
isn't reported as a figure to the accessibility API, so the assistive
technology won't read it as a figure. When alternative text is used, it is
reported as a figure so a screen reader will say "graphic" or similar to
indicate the role. If you use both, it is regarded as a figure.²


So I don¹t think that¹s such a big deal in the end.


>
>
>Now you know how they came to be! The developer needed to pass the Acrobat
>accessibility checker in order to not be fired from his job.
>
>Duff wrote: "... standing on the sidelines throwing peanut shells."
>You must be a better person than me, Duff. Sometimes at the end of a long
>day dealing with InDesign, Acrobat, and accessibility, I want to throw
>rocks
>at the engineers because of all the hoops they make an ordinary graphic
>designer go through in order to create an accessible PDF from a
>print-layout. <grin>

Sometimes I want to be the one passing you those rocks. Mostly when it
comes to EchoSign (I couldn¹t resist, sorry! :D )

Jonathan


>
>-Bevi Chagnon
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>-
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>