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Re: Acrobat Accessibility Check vs. PAC 3.0?

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From: Philip Kiff
Date: Jul 31, 2018 7:24AM


I follow the same workflow as Bevi: fix all errors in Acrobat and then
continue to remediate until all PAC 3 errors are also gone.

There are very few cases where I have had a file that passed PAC 2 or
PAC 3 cleanly and still had errors in Acrobat Pro DC's built-in
accessibility checker.

I think there are a few PDF code quirks that Acrobat's checker flags as
an error that might be treated as a false positive.

For instance, sometimes Acrobat chokes on character encoding issues that
are found in bullet labels or in artifacts, where I don't think such
items are actually an issue. I've also run into strange quirks where
Acrobat thinks there are problems with alternative text of figures that
are comprised of multiple other figures, or with some parent elements
have alternative text when they shouldn't. Or perhaps it was a case
where a tag had alternative text that wasn't allowed to have alternative
text? I don't remember. The instances were very, very infrequent.
Perhaps 1 in 100 files. In general, I think that PAC 3 does a better job
of ignoring elements that have been artifacted, and in analyzing more
accurately whether nested code structures are in fact accessible or not.

Phil.

Philip Kiff
D4K Communications


On 2018-07-30 6:59 PM, <EMAIL REMOVED> wrote:
> We find that no one tool finds everything.
> We recommend that our clients run the Acrobat checker first, correct the
> errors it finds, and then run PAC3.
> Acrobat does not find all errors...not even close!
> Wish it did a better job, though.
>
> --Bevi Chagnon
>
> - - -
> Bevi Chagnon, founder/CEO | <EMAIL REMOVED>
> - - -
> PubCom: Technologists for Accessible Design + Publishing
> consulting . training . development . design . sec. 508 services
> Upcoming classes at www.PubCom.com/classes
> - - -
> Latest blog-newsletter - Accessibility Tips
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of
> Tomlins Diane
> Sent: Monday, July 30, 2018 3:40 PM
> To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Subject: [WebAIM] Acrobat Accessibility Check vs. PAC 3.0?
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> Looking for some feedback on these 2 tools. We have a vendor that is telling
> us NOT to use Acrobat's A11y check tool, and to instead use PAC 3.0. In
> house, we've been using Acrobat since we don't yet have an Enterprise
> solution for PDFs.
>
> The vendor states that PAC is the industry standard and "Acrobat should not
> be used for a checker - That is the reason they were getting so many errors
> when in fact it was passing when run through the PAC site."
>
> So, what might be the reason for what they think are marked differences
> between what PAC reports as pass/fail/errors vs. Acrobat ? Is it better to
> use them in tandem? I'm not crazy about a vendor admonishing us to only use
> the tool THEY use. I have reviewed PDF's they send back to us as 'passed'
> and the document will have failures in Acrobat.
>
> The other wrinkle with PAC is it only works on Windows, and we a growing
> contingent of folks on Macs.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Diane R Tomlins
> HCA IT&S | Digital Media
> Accessibility SME
>
>