WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: - "labelling" links to inaccessible PDFs, blackend content?

for

From: Hayman, Douglass
Date: Jun 24, 2022 10:22AM

Joachim,

On the first part you ask that seems to be a compromise, to say "Here is a link to something inaccessible." If on the other hand you have the same content in accessible html and then inaccessible PDF file that would be better. I believe that many of these automated tools will scan and find PDFs and provide a warning simply to then have the person using the accessibility tool do the next process of manually checking that PDF for accessibility. Same would be the case for ALT tags where one could throw in gibberish like ALT="random words" and it would technically have ALT text but then next you'd need to make sure that this text was adequate.

As for your second part, I'd looked at the accessibility of a few vendors who make software for public records request administrators. In those it seemed that they would put in "redacted for privacy" or similar wording. Otherwise if one was using a screen reader and it was marked as decorative, what was read out loud would not make sense along the lines of:

1. I handed the packet to "redacted for privacy" and she stuck it in her briefcase.

Versus

2. I handed the packet to and she stuck it in her briefcase.

One might need to slightly vary the ALT for each so that doesn't get flagged when the same ALT text describes multiple images.

Doug Hayman
IT Accessibility Coordinator
Information Technology
Olympic College
<EMAIL REMOVED>
(360) 475-7632