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Re: Graphical heading & Alt-text

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From: Duff Johnson
Date: Jul 15, 2013 11:25PM

> I don't think this is a problem because most software, like MS Word and HTML
> editors, gives the developer the tool to add either Alt-text or Actual text
> to the graphic. The developer makes the decision, not the software. To me,
> that's correct.

I meant the software developer, but I take your point - there's certainly a lot more that software could do to make the richness of PDF accessibility available; I didn't mean to suggest otherwise.

> The bigger problem we have with Adobe InDesign is that it lacks the tool to
> put Actual text on a graphic.

Ouch! I didn't actually know that about ID! BIG bummer!!

> - 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.

Ugh! And it's even worse because XMP has so much promise as a metadata modelÂ… and yet Adobe (who invented it) hasn't bothered to implement it properly themselves in a key instance in which people might like to do so!

> 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.

That's a bug in Acrobat, pure and simple.

> 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.

I've served as an expert witness to help a legal defense against this sort of idiocy, and I would do so again.

Once software that fully implements PDF/UA becomes generally available this sort of problem will go away. It won't happen overnight, but the first PDF/UA checker will arrive into the marketplace soon.

Duff.