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Re: Artifact tag vs. Change tag to artifact in Acrobat

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From: chagnon@pubcom.com
Date: Mar 6, 2020 1:27PM

As others have stated, the <Artifact> tag is part of the new PDF 2.0 standard, and will also be in the forthcoming PDF/UA-2 standard.

The problem is that no A T we know of recognize the tag. Some screen readers voice it as "Artifact Path Path Path Path Path Path Path..."

The assistive technologies haven't adopted it yet, so while it can have splendiferous potential (as Duff described), it's right now an f-ing "pain in the anatomy" that makes the PDF less accessible.

This is a good example of the lack of coordination between all the stakeholders: the standards committees, PDF software producers, and assistive technologies.

They all have to get on the same page of the hymnal in order to provide any benefit to the end users.

When we get complaints from clients and end users about them, we artifact out the <Artifact> tags. Crazy.

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-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Jonathan Avila
Sent: Friday, March 6, 2020 2:38 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Artifact tag vs. Change tag to artifact in Acrobat

Last year when I converted from Word using the Acrobat plugin I started to see the artifact tag show up in the role mappings section. At one point it was mapping certain tags to artifact tags.

Jon

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Duff Johnson
Sent: Friday, March 6, 2020 2:01 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Artifact tag vs. Change tag to artifact in Acrobat

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Hi Cindy,

> Hi - I am looking through some pdf documents that have been tagged by others, and I see that they are using the <Artifact> tag on items they want to artifact.

As Paul says there is an <Artifact> element defined in PDF 2.0 (published in 2017). Also as he says, there's little support for it today (so far). But if someone is making PDF 2.0 files and tagging PDFs this way I'd love to know it. If it's possible to share one of these files that would be great.

> I've always either right-clicked on the content box and chosen "Change tag to artifact" then deleted the tag, or I've used the Reading Order to mark a tag as background/artifact.

Yes, this is entirely appropriate for content that is irrelevant to the meaning of the document. The <Artifact> tag, however (as defined in PDF 2.0) does something a little different, which is why I'm keen to see your document.

> Does tagging something as an artifact have the same effect? I just don't see that used as often, and wondered if there is a reason.

In PDF 2.0 use of an <Artifact> tag with a PDF 2.0 viewer and supportive AT would allow a piece of content to be optional.

The classic use case is of line-numbers in a document. Sometimes you want to just read the document without hearing line-numbers; sometimes you need to reference a specific line. The <Artifact> structure type in PDF 2.0 provides AT developers with a way to offer this choice to AT users.

Duff.