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Re: pdf documents

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From: Karen McCall
Date: Apr 26, 2023 10:35AM

The main problem/barrier for someone who is totally blind in remediating PDFS independently is that you have to be able to see the page in order to determine whether the content on the page has been tagged and whether the content has been tagged correctly.

For example, as someone who uses a screen reader but has a visual disability, I can still see the page. As I go down the Tags Tree and see the corresponding content highlighted, I can identify any content that is not tagged. I can hear my screen reader announce the tag and determine if the tag is correct for the type of content. I can see if something is supposed to be a paragraph or a heading.

Screen readers depend on the tags to be able to "read" a PDF so if there is part of a page/document that is not tagged, it is not read so someone who is not able to see the page/document doesn't know it is missing unless the content flow doesn't make sense.

While there are some things that someone depending on a screen reader alone can do, it is impossible to remediate PDFs without the use of some vision. It is the nature of the PDF format.

Remediating PDFs is matching tags with content and making sure that the tags are in a logical reading order which may not be the visually represented order on a page or in the document as a whole.

Cheers, Karen