WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: PDF accessibility

for

From: Karlen Communications
Date: Oct 31, 2015 9:01AM

We've had the ability to assign a language to a Tag for a long time...I think from the beginning of tagged PDF but don't quote me on that.

Select the Tag, for example <P> and right click or press the APpKey. Choose Properties and near the bottom of the dialog I'd the Language edit box.

When adaptive technology comes across the Content, my screen reader/JAWS switched synthesized voice to read the content as per the assigned language. Other AT should do this as well.

I recommend using plain vanilla language attributed like English, French or Spanish instead of localized language attributes.

The reason is that, for example English, I use a British voice. If the assigned language for the document it a Tag is English-US, my voice switches to American pronunciations which I'm not used to hearing. It takes me a while to get used to the pronunciations which affects comprehension. Same thing if someone is using American voice and is forced to listen to British pronunciations.

You can also affect the language of Alt Text on a <Figure> Tag but as of now we don't have the ability to assign language attributes to pieces of Alt Text. I foun the need to do this for people's names.

Cheers, Karen

Sent from my iPad

> On Oct 31, 2015, at 10:37 AM, Chagnon | PubCom.com < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
> We can specify the language for the entire PDF in the File/Properties dialogue.
>
> But I don't believe there's a way in Acrobat Pro to specify that a particular paragraph (or any amount of selected text) uses a particular language.
>
> Or have I missed a new feature in the latest version of Acrobat?
> Let us know if that's possible!
>
> And I, too, agree with Duff on the priorities. The Title and other metadata settings, meaningful links, and artifacting background images should also be done, but when overlooked, they usually don't provoke an insurmountable barrier to AT users that prevent them from using and understanding a PDF.
>
> Duff's list are the core requirements for accessibility. Without them, you don't have an accessible PDF.
>
> --Bevi Chagnon
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Karlen Communications
> Sent: Saturday, October 31, 2015 6:50 AM
>
> I agree with Duff. I would add a 6th unless I could associate it with number 2. The language has to be correct for the content. For example if a paragraph is in French or Spanish, the Tag Properties, language attribute for that paragraph must be French or Spanish.
>
> Cheers, Karen
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Duff Johnson
> Sent: October 30, 2015 10:54 AM
>
> Off-the-cuff, if I was to make a list of the 5 "most important" things, and assuming these are documents and not forms, the list might look more like:
>
> 1 Ensure PDF documents are tagged
> 2 Ensure all semantically significant content is tagged
> 3 Ensure the tags are in the correct logical reading order
> 4 Ensure the tags are semantically correct
> 5 Ensure content tagged as <Figure> includes alternative text, or ActualText, as appropriate
>
> Duff
>
>> I am working on making PDFs from my organisation more accessible. As we have a very large amount of documents, I would like to make sure of what is really mandatory to help visually impared, and what isn't. So far, I think that the 5 elements listed below are the most important. Does anyone thinks we are missing something really important?
>>
>> - Define title of document and show it
>> - Define heading titles
>> - Mark background images as background
>> - Links from real words, and not "click here"
>> - Image alt text
>>
>> Thank you very much for your opinion.
>
> > > >