WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Update: PDF Maker problems

for

From: Philip Kiff
Date: Sep 27, 2021 5:14PM

Echoing what Lisa says. I just ran into issues with this today, and
cannot thank you enough Bevi for your work and detailed documentation on
this. I've linked to your blog post from a government intranet area up
here in Ontario to serve as a resource to tide folks over until Adobe
pushes up a new version.

Phil.

Philip Kiff
D4K Communications

On 2021-09-27 17:07, L Snider wrote:
> Thanks for all your hard work on this and the removal instructions! I
> really hope they get this sorted...It shows they do no testing on the
> back end with users who do accessibility, or users with disabilities,
> when they make major changes. I hope this spurs change, it is 2021.
>
> Cheers
>
> Lisa
>
> On Mon, Sep 27, 2021 at 5:48 PM < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>> Thanks to everyone who posted their concerns (and other "feelings") about
>> the recent problems with PDFs exported from Word with Adobe's PDF Maker
>> plug-in. We have more than 150 votes at
>> https://www.familyhandyman.com/project/garage-floor-resurfacing-fix-a-pitted
>> -garage-floor/
>>
>> (As some commented, what does it mean when we have to vote to get bugs
>> fixed?)
>>
>> Some good news and not so good news.
>>
>> 1. Our blog that details the problems also has some help
>> https://www.pubcom.com/blog/2021-09-24_bugs/bugs_pdfmaker_1.shtml:
>>
>> a. A handout you can use to export PDFs from Word using Microsoft's
>> built-in PDF utility. At this time, it's not putting in any of the problems
>> as Adobe's, but who knows. Both companies have been known to seriously botch
>> this process.
>> https://www.pubcom.com/blog/2021-09-24_bugs/bugs_pdfmaker_1.shtml#download
>> We've given our instructions a creative commons license, which will allow
>> you to electronically distribute it within your organization.
>>
>> 2. Adobe has said they are working on a bug fix for the missing
>> Alt-text on graphics.
>>
>> 3. But upon further testing over the weekend, we've documented another
>> twist on that bug: When a graphic is manually marked in Word as decorative /
>> artifacted, the resulting tagged PDF is a mess:
>>
>> a. PDF Maker adds gibberish code as Alt-text.
>>
>> b. It is tagged as <P> with the image data. Not only is this a
>> violation of the PDF/UA-1 standard (image data must be in a <Figure> tag),
>> but it is voiced as a confusing bunch of crud: no announcement that there's
>> an image, the screen readers pick up the gibberish Alt-text.
>>
>> c. See the September 27 update to our blog at
>> https://www.pubcom.com/blog/2021-09-24_bugs/bugs_pdfmaker_1.shtml#sept27
>>
>> 4. Issues are found in the Mac update as well, including this one
>> about dragging/dropping in Acrobat's tree panels:
>> https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/acrobat-pro-accessibility
>> -tools-not-working/m-p/12408086#M331041
>>
>> 5. And I'll end on some good news. Adobe has released the super-secret
>> instructions on how to remove the current buggy version of Acrobat and roll
>> back to the previous install. See Ankit Kumar Gupta's solution at
>> https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/install-the-previous-patc
>> h-update/m-p/12387847#M3... Suggestion: keep that information for future
>> reference, and pass it along to your IT department.
>>
>> My best to you.and please encourage others to vote.
>>
>> - - -
>>
>> Bevi Chagnon | Designer, Accessibility Technician | <EMAIL REMOVED>
>> <mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> >
>>
>> - - -
>>
>> PubCom: Technologists for Accessible Design + Publishing
>>
>> consulting . training . development . design . sec. 508 services
>>
>> Upcoming classes at www.PubCom.com/ <http://www.pubcom.com/classes>; classes
>>
>> - - -
>>
>> Latest blog-newsletter
>> <https://mailchi.mp/e694edcdfadd/class-discount-3266574> - Simple Guide to
>> Writing Alt-Text
>> <https://www.pubcom.com/blog/2020_07-20/alt-text_part-1.shtml>
>>
>>
>>
>> >> >> >> > > > >