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Re: Reference tag with ALT text

for

From: Philip Kiff
Date: Apr 27, 2020 5:26AM

In the absence of additional opinions from the list, I'll venture to
confirm that the revised tagging structure for the case you've described
seems almost correct to me. The one thing I would change is that the way
you've written it makes it appear that your <Note> tag is at the same
structural level as your <P> or Paragraph tag. Normally, I think, <Note>
tags are found nested within <P> tags because they are "inline"
elements, whereas <P> tags are "block" level elements. Some automated
accessibility tests will flag <Note> tags sitting at a block or root
level with warnings or errors. So, when a <Note> is standing alone at
the bottom of a table or page somewhere, I typically nest it inside an
otherwise empty <P> like this:
<P>
- <Note>
- - <Lbl> "1"
    Text:  "content of the shared footnote..."

Regarding the use of alternative text to apply Note content to the
Reference tag, as I already mentioned, that is a tagging structure that
I personally have used just this month. And I believe that in my case,
it was the best solution available, and I think that it is an acceptable
tagging practice in terms of currently supported PDF specifications and
guidelines. But I don't know if anyone else is using this practice, and
to my knowledge it has not been tested across different assistive
technologies.

Phil.

On 2020-04-23 10:13, Zaitchik, Alan wrote:
> Thank you, Bevi and Phil!
> I probably described the case I encountered in less than precise fashion, so I will try again. Excuse the prolixity.
> Since I cannot ask the user to implement a Javascript-based solution I wonder if I can satisfy all your objections with a slight change in the tags. This hews close to Phil's suggestion.
>
> The original case was something like this (removing the Table-related context of the original since it is irrelevant).
> <Paragraph>
> Text...
> <Note>
> <Reference> with alt text "content of the shared footnote..."
> Text: "1"
> Text...
> ... more page content, etc. ...
> <Paragraph>
> Text...
> <Note>
> <Reference> with alt text " content of the shared footnote..."
> Text: "1"
> Text...
> ... more page content, etc. ...
> (artifacted away) "content of the shared footnote..."
>
> As you can see the content of the footnote ("content of the footnote ") is not tagged but remains visible where it was created, at the bottom of the page.
>
> Your reactions and other objections include the points that
> (1) the structure of a <Note> containing a <Reference> is mistaken
> (2) the note content should be a tagged element in the reading order
> (3) the reference text "1" is not implemented as a Label
>
> Would the following be acceptable? I think it is more or less what Phil did.
>
> <Paragraph>
> Text...
> <Reference> with alt text " content of the shared footnote..."
> <Lbl> "1"
> Text...
> ... more page content, etc. ...
> <Paragraph>
> Text...
> <Reference> with alt text " content of the shared footnote..."
> <Lbl> "1"
> Text...
> ... more page content, etc. ...
> <Note>
> <Lbl> "1"
> Text: "content of the shared footnote..."
>
> On the downside:
> A screen reader user is forced to hear the footnote content inline, whether s/he wants to or not.
> Updates to footnote content (or translation to another language) now must update multiple instances of the text.
>
> On the upside:
> This solves the "multiple references to the same footnote" problem.
> No javascript is required.
>
> I could see insisting on a Javascript solution (à la Ted Page) if the footnotes should remain optional, e.g. if they are lengthy or of a limited interest-- but adding Javascript may not always be possible. And anyway the Javascript solution still suffers from the second drawback of the above proposal.
>
> Alan
>
>