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Re: Word To PDF Accessibility: What Does and Does Not Transmit From Word To PDF

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From: Duff Johnson
Date: Jun 18, 2019 7:14PM

> We're seeing a regression in accessible PDFs from any source program using
> any of the available tools, not just Adobe's PDF Maker plug-in, Microsoft's
> built-in converter, Fox It, Nuance Power PDF, or Axes4 PDF's utility.
> The biggest problems are with Tables of Content, footnotes, and regular
> tables.

Can you describe the problems you are encountering now in detail?

> Part of this comes from the development of the forthcoming PDF UA-2
> standards, which are not yet completed nor published by the ISO. But
> companies are beginning to build UA-2 "stuff" into their programs now, in
> today's versions.

Really? Can you provide examples?

> Essentially, they are jumping ahead of the standard and
> consequently, no A T knows how to process this stuff and present it to the
> human being using the A T.

Most AT hasn't caught up with ISO 32000-1 (2008) yet… so ISO 32000-2 (2017) doesn't really surprise me...

> The main questions this community needs to ask and get answers for:
>
> 1. Why are we going backwards? Why are PDFs exported from Word today, with
> the latest software releases, less accessible than they were 2 years ago?

Examples, please. What exactly are they doing wrong today?

> 2. Why do different companies interpret the standards differently?

It's a human thing. :-)

> Aren't
> standards supposed to, well, standardize things?

Let's first ascertain that this is, in fact, happening...

> 3. Any why are companies programming for UA-2 before it's ready and
> released? Or even the law? Sec. 508 requires only PDF UA-1, not UA-2.
>
> Any answers?


PDF/UA-2 doesn't really exist yet. It's hard for me to believe that anyone has attempted to implement it at this stage.

If they are writing PDF 2.0 tag structures ok… but then there's the rest of the toolchain (accessibility APIs and AT) needed for consumption. It seems unlikely that Adobe (to take one example) would implement features that its own software could not consume… but maybe.

Examples would be good!

Duff.