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Re: PDF Tagging - layout tables.

for

From: Karen McCall
Date: Jul 13, 2022 8:12AM

The other problem is when people use nested tables. If you have a document where tables have been used for design layout but the overall table is interrupted by nested data tables, all bets are off for developing an automated tool that can distinguish those nuances.

BTW, I agree about the lack of keyboard support in the Acrobat UI.

Cheers, Karen

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Steve Green
Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2022 7:21 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] PDF Tagging - layout tables.

There's nothing like role="presentation" in PDFs. As Ryan says, you're going to have to re-tag the content, one tag at a time.

What I have wanted for years is a way to record and replay sequences of actions to make this sort of thing much faster. We were able to do that 15 years ago with Acrobat 7 because the Tags and Content panels were keyboard accessible. We bought a keystroke recorder that emulated a keyboard, and the efficiency improvement was staggering.

For instance, it took just a few seconds to create a list with all the <LI>, <Lbl> and <LBody> tags, or a table with all the <TH> tags, including "scope" attributes. You then had to drag all the content into the appropriate tags, but that was trivially easy.

Sadly, the Tags panel hasn't been keyboard accessible since Acrobat 8 (which is unforgivable), so the keystroke recorder technique no longer works. In principle, some other method of automation should be possible, but it would need to be able to programmatically interact with the Tags panel and would be much more complex if it's even possible at all.

Does anyone know if there is a way to record and replay sequences of actions such as changing the selected tag type or adding attributes to it? I had hoped that Acrobat's Action Wizard would do that, but it looks like it performs actions on entire documents, not individual tags.

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd


-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Ryan E. Benson
Sent: 13 July 2022 11:07
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] PDF Tagging - layout tables.

Sean
If I was doing it manually, I'd just pull out the table related tags and tag the content as appropriate, such as paragraphs and lists. The ability to do this outside of Adobe comes down to the tool you are using to make the pdfs.

--
Ryan E. Benson

On Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 11:30 PM Murphy, Sean via WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> All,
>
> I have a request from one of our developers how to apply
> role="presentation" to a PDF document. From my research this appears
> not possible. The documents being created are dynamic in nature and
> the developer is creating a template. The table is being used for
> laying out information. Yes, might not be the best approach, but this
> is what we are working with.
>
> How can you simulate the role=presentation approach available in HTML
> for tables?
> Does anyone have development documentation to achieve this functionality?
>
>
> Any help here would be greatly welcomed.
>
> Regards
> Sean Murphy
>
> Sean Murphy | Senior Digital System specialist (Accessibility) Telstra
> Digital Channels | Digital Systems
> Mobile: 0405 129 739 | Desk: (02) 9866-7917
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