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Re: Tagging issues with Acrobat Pro DC

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From: Duff Johnson
Date: Apr 11, 2019 9:42AM

Thank you for adding that, Phil.

The sequence of objects (which is what Acrobat's order panel shows) is - by design - irrelevant to accessibility… its relevance arises when we talk about software so old and/or feeble that it has no right to claim support for PDF at all.

At some point implementations have to catch up with reality. Tagged PDF has been around for almost 20 years… what is the excuse for implementations that ignore them? Why is such software tolerated?

Duff.


> On Apr 11, 2019, at 11:32, Philip Kiff < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
> One more thing, just to clarify. The sequence in the Tags panel is the order that is used by the vast majority of assistive technology. And the order in the tags panel is the one that is required to be correct if you want to meet the PDF/UA standard. Ideally, the order in the Tags panel matches the order in the Order panel and that in turn should match the order in the Content panel. However, due to the nature of the PDF format, it is sometimes impossible for content to appear correctly while maintaining a correct reading order in the Order and Content panels. By contrast, it should ALWAYS be possible to produce a correct reading order in the Tags panel.
>
> Phil.
>
> On 2019-04-11 11:26, Philip Kiff wrote:
>> I have also heard that there are some assistive technologies that continue to use an order that matches what is shown in the Order panel, so if you are targetting those devices then you can continue to use the Order panel to verify that order.
>>
>> However, I believe you will find that there is actually no difference between the order in the Order panel and the order in the Content panel. It is just that the Order panel only shows items that have tags applied, whereas the Content panel shows all the objects in the file regardless of whether they are tagged or not.
>>
>> Over the years, many people have found that if they follow Adobe's instructions on how to order content using primarily the Order panel, then they will sometimes end up with a file where text or graphics have disappeared from view or a file that seems otherwise corrupted.
>>
>> So some people who do advanced remediation of PDFs have therefore decided that they can achieve the exact same desired ordering shown in the Order panel without actually using the Order panel to re-order the containers in the Content tree. If you re-order the content directly in the Content tree, then I think it will also be re-ordered in the Order panel.
>>
>> Phil.
>>
>> Philip Kiff
>> D4K Communications
>>
>> On 2019-04-11 11:16, Larry Jones wrote:
>>> I am new to the list. I was told the acrobat order panel was connected to
>>> Braille output. Is this so?
>>>
>>> We have found changes needed to this order with images. Did we do the wrong
>>> thing and should change in the content panel?
>>>
>>> Larry
>>>
>>> ---------- message ---------
>>> From: Karlen Communications < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
>>> Date: Thu, Apr 11, 2019 at 8:41 AM
>>> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Tagging issues with Acrobat Pro DC
>>> To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
>>>
>>>
>>> It wasn't a matter of the text being mixed up in the PathPath's but that the
>>> auto tagging tool in Acrobat seemed to reverse itself and consider the
>>> Artifacts as needing Tags and the text as Artifacts. I started going through
>>> the Content Panel but found that I was making everything an Artifact and had
>>> no text at the end of the task...I would have had to manually tag all of the
>>> text.
>>>
>>> I never use the Order Panel unless I think that content/text has not been
>>> tagged. I use it as sort of a satellite view of the document but focus on
>>> the Tags Tree and the Content Panel if necessary.
>>>
>>> I agree about teaching the Content Panel, but in working through an exercise
>>> with my class in accessible media design, we all had the same document, the
>>> same version of Acrobat Pro DC and some students got table gridlines tagged
>>> as <Span>, <Figure> or just floating in the tags Tree with no apparent
>>> Tag...sometimes the opportunity for learning lands in front of you,
>>> especially when working on assignments for marks!
>>>
>>> Cheers, Karen
>>> >>> >>> >>> >> >> >> >> > > > >