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Re: Average Time to Create an Accessible PDF

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From: Josh Schroder
Date: Dec 4, 2017 8:39AM

As others have said, it's a highly variable process, but I've found that the toughest PDFs that I usually come across (containing fillable forms, no structure, layout tables, no alt-text, etc.) typically take somewhere around 1 hour per page, give or take.

For pure-text documents, I can probably do somewhere around 5 minutes per page, sometimes less.

I'm also a big proponent of CommonLook PDF. It is expensive, but it really speeds things up and reduces the frustration of dealing with the inefficient workflows in Acrobat. If you do this work often, and you consider the cost of your labor per hour, it can potentially be a really good value.

Josh Schroder
Web Administrator II
Office of Strategic Communications
Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation
(512) 936-8937

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of R.U. Steinberg
Sent: Monday, December 4, 2017 7:58 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Average Time to Create an Accessible PDF

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
> > > archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> >