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Re: Acrobat Accessibility Check vs. PAC 3.0?

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From: Karlen Communications
Date: Aug 1, 2018 5:44AM


I did hear back from CommonLook and was told that PDF Validator is free, it is not a "free trial." Just to confirm with everyone.

Cheers, Karen

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Olaf Drümmer
Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2018 1:16 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Acrobat Accessibility Check vs. PAC 3.0?

When speaking of Acrobat, it should also be noted that there is a PDF/UA-1 checker buried in the Acrobat Preflight plug-in. Its approach is similar to that of PAC 3 (which is also very worthwhile). PAC 3 and AFAIK CommonLook Validator are free (and Preflight PDF/UA-1 check is 'free' if you already have a recent version of Acrobat Pro) - why ot give each of them a try and determine which suit you best?

Olaf


> On 31. Jul 2018, at 14:51, Alan Zaitchik < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
> Bevi,
> I have found that the free CommonLook Validator plugin finds a lot
> more issues that Acrobat's Accessibility Checker. (And you can select the standards you're checking against.) Even allowing for fact that some reported failures may be false positives, is there a reason not to start with Validator?
> (I have no experience with PAC 3.0.)
> A
>
>> On Jul 30, 2018, at 6:59 PM, < <EMAIL REMOVED> > < <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
>>
>>
>> >> >> archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
>> >>
>>
> > > archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
>