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Accessible PDF Question

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From: Brian Lovely
Date: Apr 10, 2025 8:16AM

Hey Y'all

I'm looking at a pay calendar PDF for a client. Each month is a table, and each day of the month is a data cell.

They have various graphic elements in certain cells to indicate the importance of certain days. They have a right arrow and left arrow to indicate the beginning and ending of a pay period. They have a clock face graphic to indicate that corrections are due by noon of that day.

They also have a background color to indicate days they are closed, and a heavy data cell outline to indicate pay day.

They originally said the document could be a web page, and I told them that was the best idea because, although the meaning of the arrow and clock graphics could be conveyed via alt text, the meaning of the background color and heavy outline could not. A web page could use ARIA to add the pay day and business closed descriptions to the data cells.

Now they have informed me that the document has to be a PDF and I'm stumped about how to make the background color and bold data cell outline accessible.

Is there any sort of ARIA-like hidden text available to indicate these special days in a PDF? Is there anyway to add additional info to the data cell besides the text content? Does anyone have any other solutions?


Thank you,
Brian Lovely