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Re: Making older PDFs accessible

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From: Philip Kiff
Date: Feb 20, 2019 1:04PM

On 2019-02-20 1:28 PM, Laurie Kamrowski-Lamb wrote:
> 1) How reliable is the accessibility check in Adobe Acrobat? I have been
> having multiple crashes a day when I work with the larger tables.

The built-in Accessibility checker is a rough tool for doing a quick
check on the accessibility of a PDF. There are many things that cannot
be checked by any automated accessibility checker. And there are some
accessibility features that the automated Acrobat checker does not
evaluate.

I used to get crashes in Acrobat Pro DC more often than I do now. I find
the current release in the "Continuous Release" program to be very stable.

The most important thing for Acrobat's checker and table editor to work
is that the calculated number of cells in each row match what it
expects. If you have a TD spanning two rows, then the number of TD's in
that row must be one less than in a row which does not contain a span.
Same with columns. I have found that if you tag a complex table
perfectly, then the table editor can always open it without crashing,
and the Accessibility checker will always pass it without errors.

Note that the Acrobat table editor is not capable of managing tables
that span multiple pages. I think it should open them without crashing,
but you probably will not be able to edit anything beyond the first page
without corrupting the table.

Phil.

Philip Kiff
D4K Communications