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Re: Comparing Results of Tagged PDF with Acrobat and Alternatives

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From: Jonathan Avila
Date: Jun 13, 2019 10:42AM

Related to weird PDF tagging issues -- I'm still seeing a role mapping of /artifact to p in the role mappings view of Acrobat after converting a Word document to PDF using the Acrobat Plug-in in Office 365 and the Office save as PDF feature.

Jonathan


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Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Comparing Results of Tagged PDF with Acrobat and Alternatives

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We, too, have noticed the mis-tagging of TOCs and other elements for the past year, and it's getting worse with each new release or update from Microsoft and Adobe.

(FYI, I can't address FoxIt or PowerPDF because they've never been able to make a correctly tagged PDF from MS Office, so what they produce now is no better or worse than what they did in the past.)

TOCs that are constructed correctly in MS Office export as a jumble of tags that are inaccessible for those using A T, especially screen readers.

Up until about a year ago, both Microsoft and Adobe had created a reliable method of making an accessible, tagged TOC in PDFs...and now suddenly they no longer do that.

Why has this happened?

Since those of us who make and test accessible documents haven't changed our methods, the problem must come from something that Microsoft and Adobe have done to the software tools:

Could be that ...
--MS Word has changed how it encodes TOCs in Word documents.
--Microsoft's Save As PDF utility has changed how it tags the TOC.
--Adobe's PDF Maker export utility (aka the Acrobat Ribbon) has changed how it tags the TOC.

I actually don't know who changed what at this time, but I do know that what we're now getting from MS Office is a piece of junk that should not be allowed by the industry.

People -- real human beings who use A T -- can't read the TOC. It is an inaccessible mess!

If you think that this will be a problem for yourself or those who will use your documents, then I encourage you to download Karen's sample documents and judge for yourself.

And then we need to do something to correct this problem.

--Bevi Chagnon

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Bevi Chagnon, founder/CEO | <EMAIL REMOVED>
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PubCom: Technologists for Accessible Design + Publishing consulting . training . development . design . sec. 508 services Upcoming classes at www.PubCom.com/classes
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Latest blog-newsletter - Accessibility Tips at www.PubCom.com/blog

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From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Karlen Communications
Sent: Thursday, June 13, 2019 8:56 AM
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Cc: 'Access Technology Higher Education Network'
< <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: [WebAIM] Comparing Results of Tagged PDF with Acrobat and Alternatives

Hi Everyone:



I've started a series of comparison articles on the accessibility/tagging of PDF documents from Acrobat Pro DC, Foxit Phantom for Business and Nuance PowerPDF Advanced. Note that both Foxit and Nuance have versions of their software that don't have tagging capabilities. The ones listed do.



https://www.karlencommunications.com/DocumentRemediation.htm



I plan to take different elements, for example am now looking at how footnotes/endnotes are tagged by each of them, and putting the articles on this web page. I didn't want to create a new web page and this one seemed the logical choice to house the content.



Cheers, Karen