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

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From: Karlen Communications
Date: Mar 8, 2020 10:16AM

Bevi is correct. It is the Tags that are messed up, not the PDF viewer (I only use Adobe Acrobat Pro DC as my viewer) and it is not my adaptive technology (in my case a screen reader which is up to date).

Duff, I am sending you my documents off-list as I don't think the WebAIM list allows attachments. Anyone else who wants my documents, let me know.

I would also encourage EVERYONE on this list who is experiencing horrid tagging from any of the conversion/remediation tools to send their documents not under NDA to Duff.

I've been beta testing applications that produce tagged PDF for about 20 years and no one appears to be listening or taking the fact that some of us "live" in the accessible PDF world 10 and 12 hours a day seriously when we log bugs or ask for features. If Duff can influence changes that serve those of us with disabilities instead of the conversion tools themselves, then we have to give him and the ISO committee a chance to move in a direction that serves the people trying to remediate and/or access PDF documents.

Regarding the Footnote/Endnote corruption: If a page has 5 footnotes, when I land on the first one, all 5 of the footnote references are read as if they are all part of that first footnote. When I look at the Tags Tree, all of the Footnotes on the page are in one Tag, not separate Tags for each Footnote. It is the same with Endnote, I land on the first one and all of the Endnotes in the document are read as if they are all part of the first reference and none of the other Endnotes are read because in the Tags Tree, they are all under a single Tag at the end of the document.

Regarding The TOC corruption: First, I've been asking for years that the text "Table of Content" or "Contents" which I've used a Subtitle Style for NOT be in the TOC. Even if I separate the text using the ability to modify the Style and add space below the text, it is ALWAYS lumped into the TOC as a <TOCI> Tag. I have to drag it out and edit the Tag to be a Heading. Additionally, the text of a <TOCI> Tag is divided by <Link> Tags as follow - "<TOCI><Link>Introduction<Link>........5" To a screen reader, this appears as follows:

Introduction
.........5

With all of the dots being read because the TOCI is not being tagged correctly. When I go back to my accessible document sample that I use for workshops, a TOC was more or less tagged correctly in October 2018 and this new tagging happened sometime after that.

The impact to those of us with disabilities is that if we get a list of links for the TOC, the Heading or navigational point is separated from its page number which is a second navigational point when it should be a single navigational point of text and page number. Prior to November 2018, when we got a list of links for a TOC, we had the following:

"Introduction...5"

Where we heard the word Introduction followed by only three dots and then the page number. We understand this to be a TOC entry and way to navigate to that point in the document.

With this new implementation that all four of the applications I tested use, it is easy, even without a learning, cognitive or visual disability to lose your place in a list of TOC links.

I mentioned that prior to October 2018 the TOCI entries were more or less tagged correctly. What I saw was sometimes the <Link> Tag would be used, sometimes the <Reference> Tag would be used and sometimes both of them would be used within a single <TOCI> Tag.

Again, we are often confronted with bloated Tags Trees that make remediation and QA arduous, time consuming and confusing.

We ARE the front line people who will always be remediating and providing quality assurance. Not everyone can afford a remediation service for all documents. Besides, we need to know that what we are getting from remediation services is what we paid for. In short, we are not going away and we need reliable tools with reliable results when we create accessible content and need to convert it to other formats.

Please, take this opportunity to send Duff EVERYTHING you can, not under NDA, that you encounter that needs fixing!!!!!!!! And briefly explain the problem!

We have to give the ISO committee a chance to influence both the specifications and developers before we completely abandon the PDF format and focus on applications that convert PDF to something accessible and readable with reliable consistent results.

Cheers, Karen.