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Rejoice! PDF Maker is fixed!

for

From: chagnon@pubcom.com
Date: Mar 9, 2022 12:42PM

Great news, list colleagues!

Adobe released version 22 of Acrobat Pro today, and with it, the MS Office
plug-in PDF Maker was fixed, too. (PDF Maker converts MS Office documents to
accessible tagged PDFs) Adobe's announcement is below <> .

Because 206 people voted to fix these bugs at www.Acrobat.UserVoice.com, the
previous version's bugs were put on the fast track. All of you made that
happen!

No more PathPathPathPath all over tables and other parts of our documents.
Your personal comments helped put the bugs on Adobe's radar.

Note these two items:

1. Vote one more time…this time to thank Adobe. Let's acknowledge
their reaffirmed commitment to accessibility. Add your thanks at either the
Acrobat User Voice page or at the Adobe Forums (or at both):

a. Acrobat User Voice vote page
<https://acrobat.uservoice.com/forums/590923-acrobat-for-windows-and-mac/sug
gestions/44183082-accessibility-errors-with-pdf-maker-update-sept-20> .

b. Adobe Public Forums webpage.
<https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/alt-text-converting-wron
g-from-word-to-pdf/td-p/11352677/page/2>

2. Update your version of Acrobat DC Pro to version 22 (build number
22.001.20085). The new PDF Maker plug-in will automatically be installed
into your MS Office apps along with Acrobat itself. You can view your
current version under the Help menu in Acrobat (Windows).

a. If you need to put in a support request to your IT department,
refer them to the above 2 links as well as to Adobe's release notes
webpage, Acrobat 22 release notes.
<https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/whats-new/2022-march.html> Remind
IT to reboot your computer after the update is installed (I prefer cold
boots, a k a total shut down and then restart).

b. I uploaded two sample PDFs, before and after, to the User Voice
page with today's post; the after version shows the improved accessibility
in the 2022 update, and the before version shows the hot mess of buggy tags
we've had for a couple of years. Sample PDFs
<https://acrobat.uservoice.com/forums/590923-acrobat-for-windows-and-mac/sug
gestions/44183082-accessibility-errors-with-pdf-maker-update-sept-20> . I
know that webpage is a disorganized mess of posts and samples, so if you
can't find today's samples, email me directly and I'sll send them to you.
<EMAIL REMOVED> <mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> >

Great job, everyone! And thanks so much for this community's support and
help. YOU are the best in the industry.

-Bevi Chagnon

- - -

Bevi Chagnon, founder, ADS CTT AIGA MBA

<EMAIL REMOVED> <mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> > | 301-580-1944
cell/text | Eastern US time zone (UTC-5)

US delegate to the ISO for PDF and PDF/UA universal access standards

ACP - Adobe Community Professional

ADS - IAAP Certified Accessible Document Specialist

- - -

PubCom: Technologists for Accessible Design + Publishing

consulting * training * development * design * sec. 508 services

- - -

Blog: www.pubcom.com/blog <http://www.pubcom.com/blog>;

Classes: www.pubcom.com/classes <http://www.pubcom.com/classes>;

- - -




Adobe's announcement today:


Hi,

Thank you for raising these accessibility issues. The post mentions about
the following six bugs being introduced with the update that went live on
September 14, 2021

1: Alt-Text from MS Word is not converting into the PDF. Instead, it is
dropped and gibberish code is inserted

2: Every cell border on every table cell is being tagged as
<P>PathPathPathPath

3: The underline on Hyperlinks should be tagged as artifacts

4: Borders and background shadings on Text Boxes are being tagged as a
combination of <Figure>s and PathPathPath

5: Paragraph borders and shadings: same deal as #4 above. Per the PDF/UA-1
standard, they are visually decorative and should be artifacted

6: Dragging and dropping elements in both the Tag and Order panels is now
broken.

Would like to mention that out of these, #1 and #6 were introduced with the
Sep 14 update and remaining (#2, #3, #4 & #5) were present even in the
Acrobat version prior to Sep 14 update. We apologize for the inconvenience
caused by these issues.

Issue #1 and #6 were the regressions introduced with Sept 14th update and
hence were fixed on priority with Sept 29th Update (Release Notes for
September 29, 2021).

With the latest version (22.001.20085) of Acrobat Pro DC released on March
7th (Release Notes for March 07, 2022), issues #2 and #3 have also been
fixed.

Issues #4 and #5 have been partially fixed so that PathPathPath tags won't
be part of the tag tree anymore. The remaining issue for #4 and # 5 (Borders
and background shadings on Text Boxes / paragraphs are being tagged as
<Figure>s) have already been added to our product backlog and those will be
prioritized to be fixed in coming releases.

You can use the menu item Help → Check for Updates… to get the latest
version of Acrobat Pro DC containing these fixes. Please try out the fixes
and share the feedback as that will help us make our applications better
from accessibility perspective.

Thanks & Regards

Tanvi Rastogi

(Adobe Engineer)