WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Average Time to Create an Accessible PDF

for

From: R.U. Steinberg
Date: Dec 4, 2017 6:57AM


A one page PDF with form fields takes me much longer to remediate than a 10
page straight text PDF. I could spend 8 hours on the form vs. less than an
hour on straight text. If the PDF has color that fails contrast, that can
be fixed in Acrobat Pro, but that is also a time factor. Complex tables are
also a pain. I know that doesn't answer your question, but I suggest you do
an inventory of sorts on what types of PDFs you have (forms, text only,
with or without color, with or without images, with or without tables, etc.)



On Mon, Dec 4, 2017 at 5:51 AM Alastair Campbell < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> >
> > what everyone considers to be the average time it takes them to make a
> > single page document (Word, PDF, HTML)
> > that is inaccessible and output it as an accessible PDF.
> >
>
> I'm afraid the scale of different is logarithmic different for simple and
> complex cases, so there is not realistic answer for this.
>
> For example, if you have a simple Word document with a couple of (properly
> marked up in Word) headings, it is hardly any time.
>
> An identical looking page that was an image of the same text, that needs to
> be OCRed and structured by hand would take a lot of time.
>
> If there are more complex structures (tables, quotes etc) the time goes up
> again. If there are images that need alts, or video content, the time goes
> up again.
>
> For a 100 page document from a good Word source doc, you might spend 5
> minutes. An identical looking doc from an un-structured indesign source
> might take 5 days. It is that much difference, so any 'average' would be
> wildly different depending on what the sources were.
>
> If you are working with a PDF doc then the difference is mainly that you
> can't work on the source, so it had better be the final version as any
> changes from the source will undo your work.
>
> I haven't really tackled HTML to PDF as generally if you have an accessible
> HTML version, you don't also need an accessible PDF version.
>
> I hope that helps in some way, but sorry there isn't a nice answer!
>
> -Alastair
> > > > >