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Re: PDF U/A alternate description for links

for

From: chagnon
Date: Feb 15, 2023 7:34AM

This is an error in PDF/UA, and as a member of the ISO committee that writes PDF/UA, I believe that it's the type of requirement that committee members don't fully understand. (The original standard was written before I joined the committee.)

Software checkers like PAC, Adobe's accessibility checker, CommonLook, etc. can only determine yes/no situations, such as "yes" the link has Alt Text or "no" it doesn't. It takes a human being to determine whether it's needed or not, not software.

Several of the software remediation tools flag missing Alt Text as an error, and then provide the software solution — which just picks up the hyperlink text and repeats it as Alt Text. How is that supposed to benefit the end user? It's repeating the same information but without the user controls of regular text: Screen readers clip the user's control when reading Alt Text.

We use PAC 3 to flag hyperlinks and then manually check them to determine if Alt Text is warranted. Definitely do not put Alt Text on TOCs because it clips the user's control over what they hear and how it's presented to them. Functionality is diminished.

We need to do better.

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