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Re: Non-existent Alt-text voiced in PDF

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From: David Engebretson Jr.
Date: Mar 5, 2023 7:25PM

Hi Colleen,

Over the years I've found document authoring products like InDesign are not only inaccessible for me to design documents, as a screen reader user, but also I've found there is a propensity for those tools to output data that _may_ not be PDF compliant. Even to Acrobat.

Also, I've seen visually oriented designers struggle with design tools oriented towards outputting PDF. There are just so many inconsistencies. Sometimes the visually oriented designer will have no problem outputting to a fully WCAG compliant PDF, but sometimes one little problem will perplex them.

What I often suggest with my colleagues is to use a different authoring tool, ensure you've got the original document authoring source, don't rely on Acrobat for remediating all issues, and keep the code simple.

Embedding elements is just going to expose the (what I see as totally apparent) inability for vendors who offer PDF conversion capabilities that are consistent across all platforms. I should explain my humble opinion a little: every software vendor who provides exporting to PDF as a feature of their software should use the same library so the PDF output is consistently accessible with no dependency on the software vendor to figure it out.

I thought that's why the PDF file format definitions moved to an international organization that defines PDF... Adobe dumped the responsibilities for PDF requirements off to the international group many years ago.

InDesign, Acrobat, Microsoft products like Word, Google products, Apple products, etc. There's no consistency in the accessibility of their respective PDF output.

It does baffle me that, since InDesign and Acrobat are both products of Adobe, they don't have deep integration with each other to ensure their products work flawlessly together. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that PDF's are, at their very base, PostScript documents.

The frustration I'm expressing is from many decades of realizing PDF's aren't worth it anymore. Semantic HTML documents that are WCAG compliant are a much simpler way to deal with accessibility issues. In addition: If you need to print something at a print house for visually oriented folks to consume then send the print house an InDesign document so they can print it from that beautiful InDesign document you've spent precious time creating.

I'll quit rambling now. *smile*
David