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Re: Update: PDF Maker problems

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From: Karen McCall
Date: Sep 28, 2021 6:09AM

As a follow-up to Bevi's identification of this failure of Adobe to pay attention to the impact that these changes have on those of us who depend on our adaptive technology to read PDF content, I tested images marked as decorative in Word then converted to tagged PDF using the PDF Maker tool.

I am NOT notified that there is an image at all which I would expect. What I do hear appears to be just text "P 8 Y U". I hear this each time I land on a decorative image.

"Y me?" good question. 😊

I can't even go in and artifact the decorative elements using the Content Panel.

I'm also noticing that a TOC is now being identified as a list of X items which makes me think I'm in the body of the document not in the TOC...but the individual items in the "list" aren't being identified as list items. This is affecting my legacy Accessible PDF as well as the ones I'm creating now. The TOC should not be reading as a list!

My recommendation for those of us using adaptive technology is to use the Export to Word in Acrobat , not the Save As...I find I get better results using Export PDF then choosing Word. Or, get a program like ABBYY FineReader or OmniPage Pro and open the PDF in that application then save as Word. I don't use Reader so don't know if that tool is available in Reader.

Am going to test PowerPDF and Foxit to see if I get the same results. Usually they follow the Adobe framework so this might be happening in those tools as well.

I don't understand why Adobe and others don't address accessibility bugs. We shouldn't have to vote on our right to read. Access to education and employment is a human right.

Cheers, Karen