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Re: Track Changes - Best Practices for showing document revisions in Word, PDF, and HTML?

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From: Jim Homme
Date: Jan 16, 2018 11:24AM

Hi,
This is just my opinion on the PDF question. I'm guessing that the PDF documents originally came from an MS Office program, like Word, for example. If I were doing this, I would mark up the documents using Track Changes in Word. Also, another opinion, based on some experience as a screen reader user, I have had the most success working with Track Changes in Word using NVDA. I have no useable sight. The way I generally work is I turn on Markup, and I'm pretty sure I use simple markup. I look at the changes to get a feel for what the person wants. Then I turn off all markup and make my changes, then turn it back on to pass back to the other collaborators. I endorse working with Office first, because I feel that as a totally blind person, I have much more control over the editorial process, whereas if I did it in Adobe, I would pretty much be useless.

Thanks.

Jim


Jim Homme

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Philip Kiff
Sent: Monday, January 15, 2018 3:29 PM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: [WebAIM] Track Changes - Best Practices for showing document revisions in Word, PDF, and HTML?

I have a Word document that proposes a small set of changes to a set of regulations. The document uses strikeout and redlining (red coloured) fonts to indicate deletions and insertions. I'm trying to figure out the simplest, most accessible way of turning this document into an accessible Word file, and then probably also an accessible PDF and web page.

I see there have been some discussions around this before on WebAIM:

Track Changes (mainly about using MS Word):
https://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread?threadI27

And a couple threads on Strikethrough Text:
https://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread?threadD64
https://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread?threadX09

From these threads, I gather that using MS Word's Track Changes feature can produce Word documents that are pretty accessible (though you'll want to darken the choice of red colour used, I think).

But for PDF, is there really a good option like Track Changes in Word?
And for HTML, is using ins and del tags good enough, or should I be inserting visual markers in the text - prefixes or brackets or...?

I foresee receiving more of these documents in the future, and I'm leaning towards trying to get this government office to rewrite the list of text changes by peppering the document with visual "Inserted:" and "Deleted:" text markers. And then possibly also including complete "Original" and "Final (After Changes)" versions. And maybe even including a redline/strikeout version as a redundant third copy. But that all seems so cumbersome to me.

Does anyone have better, simpler solutions? Or samples of good documents showing versioning (especially in PDF) that I can look at?

Phil.

Philip Kiff
D4K Communications