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Re: Underlines in Forms

for

From: chagnon@pubcom.com
Date: Mar 1, 2023 5:16PM

Oo oo oo, always a sore topic for me when our assistive technologies don't completely follow the standards, especially PDF/UA. We shouldn't have to customize our code to satisfy a particular screen reader.

Joseph, can you tell from the PDF's File / Document Properties which software was used? Looking for:
— Version of Word or MS Office.
— PDF Producer (the tool that converted the source Word file to PDF). Was it Adobe PDF Maker (also known as PDF Library)? Or does is say MS Word? Need version number for this, too.

As far as I know, both the Adobe PDF Maker and Microsoft internal converter were properly coding underlines so that they wouldn't be voiced. If older software is used for either Word or PDF Maker, there could be problems.

For a quick reference, here are Microsoft's and Adobe's website for latest release builds. Compare them with what's on your system.

Microsoft: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates
Adobe Acrobat and PDF Maker: https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/release-note/release-notes-acrobat-reader.html

—Bevi Chagnon
US Delegate to the ISO for PDF and PDF/UA standards

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-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Sherman, Joseph
Sent: Wednesday, March 1, 2023 6:51 PM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: [WebAIM] Underlines in Forms

Hi all.
I am remediating a PDF Form in Adobe. The author put in underlines in the Word document and used the Autodetect Form Fields command. The problem is that JAWS reads all the Underlines (underline, underline, underline), which is annoying (NVDA does not read the underlines). If I try to Artifact the Underlines from the Content Panel, for some reason the entire content of the Container gets untagged, instead of just the Underline. For example, I have put the Underlines from a section in an Artifact, but the entire section has been untagged for some reason. I can see the empty <P> tag.

I know they can remove the underlines from the Word document and manually add the Form Fields, but there are many fields and the Autodetect Form Fields command is convenient.

Is there a way to convert to PDF without it putting the Underlines in Content that JAWS will read? Or is there a way to Artifact the Underlines without untagging the Content section?

Thank you,


Joseph