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Re: Issues with Adobe accessibility checker converting PPTx to PDF

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From: Laura Roberts
Date: Feb 4, 2023 12:34PM

The report doesn't contain false positives I usually see. It looks to me
like it hasn't been properly remediated. The reason I say this is the first
2 fails are common and easy to fix. The nested alt text fail is a common
one too. Did you use an accessible PDF specialist to remediate this?


On Fri, Feb 3, 2023, 1:08 PM < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Hope your day is going well. I'm looking for some guidance regarding the
> aforementioned subject. One of our profs is having issues with PDF
> accessibility and specifically, the false positives when running the
> checker in Adobe. I copy here some exchanges regarding the problem they
> are having. But from what I understand, they are hoping to eliminate the
> false positives from the report as it requires more checking and it is
> already a lot of work. Is there anything more I can tell them, besides
> what has already been provided? A little background:
>
> After the prof reached out to an internal IT resource, they got this
> answer:
>
> "I've taken a look and I'm wondering whether you should not check off
> 'Enable Accessibility and Reflow with tagged Adobe PDF box' as it may be
> overwriting you accessibility pieces that you have done in pptx.
>
> That would be my first go-to in determining why this is happening and to
> simply NOT select that option (Enable Accessibility and Reflow with
> tagged Adobe PDF) as that option may be adding proper tags for headings,
> lists, hyperlinks, and other structural elements in the PDF document
> when it was already there in the pptx."
>
> The prof then replied (please see attached screenshots):
>
> "I followed your suggestion: I saved the PPTX as a PDF with the Enable
> Accessibility and Reflow with tagged Adobe PDF box unchecked. Below, I
> provide excerpts (in the form of screenshots) of the Adobe accessibility
> checker reports from when the box was unchecked and then from when the
> box was checked. It seems unchecking the box does not resolve the
> problem."
>
> They then got this reply:
>
> "The accessibility report in PDF is reading the textboxes that was
> created in the PPTX format as figures. It is still good to check what
> the reasoning is for PDF to be flagging these figures, but with a deeper
> analysis after the reports, it is clear that alt text was maintained and
> this was a false positive flag.
>
> As you said, doing a review of the errors from the accessibility report
> via text to speech to go through the flagged material may be beneficial
> to see if there is something going on with these error flags. Some will
> be an actual error where you will work on correcting and some will be
> false errors."
>
> And then they reached out to me to see if there was any way to resolve
> this at the source. I'm not a PDF specialist, so I'm turning to the
> community to see if there are any ideas about this. Please note the prof
> is already using the Accessibility Checker in PPTx and have the
> rudimentary knowledge to make their PPTx accessible using the MS
> accessibility checker. I apologize if this email is a bit confusing or
> if this is off-topic, but this is basically the only info I have. I
> would appreciate feedback on this issue.
>
> Thanks,
> Catherine> > > >