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Re: Accessible PDF Question

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From: Philip Kiff
Date: Apr 10, 2025 9:32AM

Paul and Duff provide helpful tagging suggestions.

I would add a note of caution about the use of colouring, shading, and
bold alone in the visual design - regardless of whether it is a PDF or a
web page. Folks who are colour-blind or who have low vision may find
background shading difficult to distinguish. Likewise relying solely on
the distinction between heavy vs regular cell outlines or on  bold vs
plain text to signify something important to visual users can create
problems.

Technically, if the background shading is strong enough to pass minimum
colour contrast guidelines, then such a design can pass accessible
testing. And using bold vs plain will usually also be considered to pass
minimum guidelines. Not sure how I would evaluate the use of heavy cell
outlines vs regular ones.

But while they might minimally "pass" some tests, I'd still generally
advise caution about relying only those specific design elements for
visual users, and try to find a way to create more distinct differences
- changes in font, dashed vs solid lines, capitalization vs lower cases,
fully reversed colours, etc.

Phil.

On 2025-04-10 10:16 a.m., Brian Lovely via WebAIM-Forum wrote:
> [....] 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 also have a background color to indicate days they are closed, and a heavy data cell outline to indicate pay day.