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Re: Non-existent Alt-text voiced in PDF

for

From: Colleen Gratzer
Date: Mar 6, 2023 9:38AM

Hi, Bevi.

The icons are Illustrator format (.ai). They are non-decorative and
include text (icons in place of text to depict file formats).

The actual text was added in InDesign.

In the PDF, if they are inside a P tag, only the actual text is voiced,
as should be the case. If they are inside a list tag, the actual and
Alt-text get voiced.

I just realized maybe they are not voicing Alt-text as well, but the
text inside the image as well. So I checked the icons and converted the
text to outlines.

Regardless, it doesn't make sense why the same icons were voicing one
way inside a P tag and another inside a list tag.

But now the figures that were inside the P voice with the word "graphic"
and the actual text (as if they had Alt-text), and the ones in the list
voice just with the actual text, as expected.

<shrug>

Colleen


On 3/6/23 11:15 AM, <EMAIL REMOVED> wrote:
> Colleen, just checking to make sure I understand the situation.
> The icon graphics are made in Adobe Illustrator and then used as bullets and as anchored graphics in paragraphs in the InDesign layout, correct?
>
> Questions:
> 1. What file format is being used to bring them into the InDesign layout?
> 2. Is the graphic icon file flattened? And does it contain only the icon image, not anything else?
> 3. At what stage in the workflow is the Alt Text and Actual Text being added to the icon: in Illustrator or InDesign?
> 4. Since InDesign doesn't allow us to use graphics as bullets, how did you get your icons to become bullets?
>
> You have 5 stakeholders in this scenario: Illustrator and how it encodes a file; InDesign and how it encodes a PDF when exported; Acrobat and how it processes the content in the PDF; and 2 screen readers, NVDA and JAWS, and how they process/render the file.
>
> —Bevi
> — — —
> Bevi Chagnon | Designer, Accessibility Technician | <EMAIL REMOVED>
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