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Re: New bug in Adobe PDF Maker

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From: Karen McCall
Date: Nov 2, 2023 6:30AM

We saw this bug in Microsoft Office 2010. With that bug, all figures in the document/PDF from any Office application were thrown at the top of the tags tree.

This is when I started adding captions to graphics. It took less time to artifact the graphics than it did trying to drag them around the tags tree. With the captions present, those using adaptive technology or who required a Braille copy of the PDF had access to the alt text/knew there was a graphic there.

So the bug has reappeared but now scattering the graphics!

Everything old is new again!

Cheers, Karen

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of <EMAIL REMOVED>
Sent: Thursday, November 2, 2023 2:09 AM
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List' < <EMAIL REMOVED> >; 'Access Technology Higher Education Network' < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: [WebAIM] New bug in Adobe PDF Maker

A major bug was recently introduced into Adobe's PDF Maker plug-in for MS Office / Windows.

With the latest update in September-October, graphics no longer have their <Figure> tags placed in the correction location of the tag tree's reading order. Instead, they're scattered throughout the PDF's tag tree, sometimes 3 or 5 or even 15 pages away from their intended location.

Suggestions:

1. We need to vote this up on Adobe's bug website,
https://acrobat.uservoice.com/forums/590923-acrobat-for-windows-and-mac/sugg
estions/47424254-pdf-maker-new-bug-puts-figure-tags-in-the-wrong So please vote (that's very critical to get it noticed by Adobe's powers) and add your comments to the discussion. Be sure to let Adobe know that you are required to make fully accessible PDFs and that this is NOT a minor bug.

2. In the meantime, use Microsoft's internal PDF export utility from
Word. It places the <Figure> correctly in the tag tree. Our blog-tutorial has directions. Use Method C at
https://www.pubcom.com/blog/tutorials/ms-office/export-pdf/index.shtml

Thanks for helping make accessible documents better!



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