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Re: [Athen] Update: PDF Maker problems

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From: Steve Green
Date: Sep 29, 2021 2:15AM

Returning to the topic of Microsoft's PDF export utility for Word (File / Save As / PDF), why do so many of you not use it? Are there any specific things it does badly?

I have done a comparison between it and the "Save As Adobe PDF" option, and the Microsoft export works better for all the content types that we deal with. Almost every document we work on needs to comply with both PDF/UA and WCAG 2.1 AA, so if the Microsoft export was problematic I think we would know about it.

That said, I am well aware that there are some content types that we never encounter, such as mathematical and chemical formulae, embedded audio and video and probably a lot more.

And to answer Susan's question, a well-produced PDF will invariably be more accessible than the source document, but the extent of the difference depends on the nature of the content. For example, in a PDF you can artifact all decorative images and shapes so they are not exposed to assistive technologies. You can't do that in a Word document. Even if you mark an image as decorative, screen readers announce "decorative image". This is extraordinarily annoying if the document contains a lot of decorative images or shapes such as lines, boxes and arrows.

You cannot use a screen reader's single-key navigation shortcuts in Word, so there is no way to jump to the next type of element such as a list, graphic or table. Also, it is easier to select different colours for the text and background in a PDF - I am not aware of a way to change the colour of the text in all paragraph styles at the same time in Word.

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd