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Thread: Printable Brochures
Number of posts in this thread: 7 (In chronological order)
From: Michael.Moore
Date: Tue, Sep 28 2010 2:18PM
Subject: Printable Brochures
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We have a library of print brochures that are used by service providers and field staff to distribute through our field offices, doctors offices, service provider facilities and similar locations. The brochures describe various programs offered by agency and include contact and eligibility information.
The camera ready print copies of these materials are stored electronically as PDFs. All of the information found in the brochures is available on our website but is not laid out the same and some of the language is different.
We have been placing the brochures on the website along with text transcripts of the content of the brochures. We provide the text transcripts rather than making the PDFs directly accessible due to the difficulty of making tri-fold, inDesign created content accessible. The reason for placing them on the website is to allow folks to print the brochures locally rather than needing to order them from the main office.
My question is this. Would it be better to link from the brochure libraries to the appropriate program content in the website rather than duplicate the text of the brochure as a separate document? In my opinion the website content is more thorough and much easier to navigate than the text transcript of the brochure or the PDF would be if it were made accessible.
The scheme would work something like this.
Link to brochure about XYZ program, link to website section describing XYX program.
Mike Moore
From: Duff Johnson
Date: Wed, Sep 29 2010 2:06AM
Subject: Re: Printable Brochures
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> My question is this. Would it be better to link from the brochure libraries to the appropriate program content in the website rather than duplicate the text of the brochure as a separate document? In my opinion the website content is more thorough and much easier to navigate than the text transcript of the brochure or the PDF would be if it were made accessible.
I'n not sure why you think the PDF wouldn't be easy to navigate. Ensure the tags meet best-practice standards (include appropriate headings, etc), and it would be precisely as navigable as HTNL.
Duff Johnson
Appligent Document Solutions
http://www.appligent.com
Blog: http://www.appligent.com/talkingpdf
Tweets: http://www.twitter.com/duffjohnson
From: Karlen Communications
Date: Wed, Sep 29 2010 4:24AM
Subject: Re: Printable Brochures
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I agree and work on tagged PDF tri-fold brochures all the time. If you're
encountering difficulties could it be with the source InDesign documents
and how they are created before exporting to tagged PDF?
Cheers, Karen
From: Michael.Moore
Date: Wed, Sep 29 2010 7:48AM
Subject: Re: Printable Brochures
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Karen and Duff,
You are both correct we can make the PDFs directly accessible (mostly). The issue that we have with the PDFs is the way that they are created in inDesign. These brochures are, as Karen describes in her book, fragile PDFs. The remediation is very time consuming and often only limited in success and we are talking about a large number of brochures. We also do not have access to the original inDesign files or the assets used to create them.
I believe, but may be swayed otherwise by the bright minds in this group, that even after remediation that the brochures will not be accessible to everyone. By default the visual reading order is incorrect until you print and fold the brochure. I am aware of reflow, but I do not believe that the average person on the street has ever seen that feature. I am not even sure if all PDF readers have the feature, Adobe is not the only game in town. I have seen problems with overlapping text in reflow view, particularly when magnification is applied. This may be another manifestation of the fragile nature of the PDFs that we are working with and the techniques used by the media artists working in inDesign. I have not even mentioned the real world issue that many (most who I have spoken with personally) screen reader users (my personal experience is primarily with JAWS users) regard the PDF format with deep suspicion and approach all PDFs as if they were inaccessible.
So my original question remains. Which is the better alternative, a link to a text transcript that duplicates the content of the PDF or to existing web content that provides more detailed and well organized presentations of the programs described in the brochures? If time and money were not an issue I would probably advocate for all three but even though I work for the government I still live in the real world and I really am here to help. <grin/>
By the way I highly recommend Karen's Book "Accessible and Usable PDF Documents: Techniques for Document Authors" to anyone who is responsible for creating or remediating PDFs.
Mike Moore
From: Shirley Hicks
Date: Wed, Sep 29 2010 8:21AM
Subject: Re: Printable Brochures
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Good morning all,
Forgive me for jumping in at this point; I've lurked on the list for a
couple of years.
I'm in the middle of a career transition from print production to
software development
and systems administration. Currently back at school for computer
science, but know
the Adobe products well.
One of the issues still to be addressed in both the print and web
production worlds is a unified
content flow. RIght now, content for destined for the two different
mediums flows through
different production formats, with different encoding and tagging
structures.
There are technical and historical reasons for this, mainly to due
with a forking of formatting methods
and languages in the move forward from Compugraphic typesetting
systems to desktop composition
systems. When HTML was developed, it was based on SGML, the original
Compugraphic markup language.
However, the initial Adobe products used their own markup language and
the two didn't talk well for, oh,
about 15-17 years.
The ultimate solution is to use a common formatting markup structure,
with final formatting being
applied late in the game dependent on final destination. Two years
ago, I saw (and played with)
the first long document production package that used HTML and CSS to
style documents for
commercial print output.
It's called Flare and it's produced by a company called MadCap
(website is http://www.madcapsoftware.com, not sure how accessible it
is)
This is not the only application I saw that could do this, but it was
the first one that I'd seen that could
produce final files that I'd want to deal with as a pre-press
technician.
Having seen that, I knew it was time to start getting ready for the
next wave of change that will
soon hit the printing industry.
While this won't solve the immediate problem being discussed, I think
that it's worth noting that
there is at least one print-production compatible software package
available that is worth exploring
to see if it will allow cleaner tagging within generated pdfs for the
visually impaired population.
As part of the discussion here, my own take would be that the fastest,
easiest solution would be to get
the upstream (pre-production or extracted) text files, clean them up
and structure them with HTML and CSS.
WIll be looking for the book.
Shirley Hicks
BIrmingham, AL
On 29-Sep-10, at 8:47 AM, < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Karen and Duff,
>
> You are both correct we can make the PDFs directly accessible
> (mostly). The issue that we have with the PDFs is the way that they
> are created in inDesign. These brochures are, as Karen describes in
> her book, fragile PDFs. The remediation is very time consuming and
> often only limited in success and we are talking about a large
> number of brochures. We also do not have access to the original
> inDesign files or the assets used to create them.
>
> I believe, but may be swayed otherwise by the bright minds in this
> group, that even after remediation that the brochures will not be
> accessible to everyone. By default the visual reading order is
> incorrect until you print and fold the brochure. I am aware of
> reflow, but I do not believe that the average person on the street
> has ever seen that feature. I am not even sure if all PDF readers
> have the feature, Adobe is not the only game in town. I have seen
> problems with overlapping text in reflow view, particularly when
> magnification is applied. This may be another manifestation of the
> fragile nature of the PDFs that we are working with and the
> techniques used by the media artists working in inDesign. I have not
> even mentioned the real world issue that many (most who I have
> spoken with personally) screen reader users (my personal experience
> is primarily with JAWS users) regard the PDF format with deep
> suspicion and approach all PDFs as if they were inaccessible.
>
> So my original question remains. Which is the better alternative, a
> link to a text transcript that duplicates the content of the PDF or
> to existing web content that provides more detailed and well
> organized presentations of the programs described in the brochures?
> If time and money were not an issue I would probably advocate for
> all three but even though I work for the government I still live in
> the real world and I really am here to help. <grin/>
>
> By the way I highly recommend Karen's Book "Accessible and Usable
> PDF Documents: Techniques for Document Authors" to anyone who is
> responsible for creating or remediating PDFs.
>
> Mike Moore
From: David Farough
Date: Wed, Sep 29 2010 8:27AM
Subject: Re: Printable Brochures
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Hi Michael:
I Rarely see tagged PDF documents. I am always pleasantly surprised
when I do. My vote would go to linking to the equivalent program
descriptions on the website. If possible it would be preferable to
point everyone to this information and remove the inaccessible
documents.
>>> < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > 09:47 AM Wednesday, September 29,
2010 >>>
Karen and Duff,
You are both correct we can make the PDFs directly accessible (mostly).
The issue that we have with the PDFs is the way that they are created
in inDesign. These brochures are, as Karen describes in her book,
fragile PDFs. The remediation is very time consuming and often only
limited in success and we are talking about a large number of brochures.
We also do not have access to the original inDesign files or the assets
used to create them.
I believe, but may be swayed otherwise by the bright minds in this
group, that even after remediation that the brochures will not be
accessible to everyone. By default the visual reading order is incorrect
until you print and fold the brochure. I am aware of reflow, but I do
not believe that the average person on the street has ever seen that
feature. I am not even sure if all PDF readers have the feature, Adobe
is not the only game in town. I have seen problems with overlapping
text in reflow view, particularly when magnification is applied. This
may be another manifestation of the fragile nature of the PDFs that we
are working with and the techniques used by the media artists working in
inDesign. I have not even mentioned the real world issue that many (most
who I have spoken with personally) screen reader users (my personal
experience is primarily with JAWS users) regard the PDF format with deep
suspicion and approach all PDFs as if they were inaccessible.
So my original question remains. Which is the better alternative, a
link to a text transcript that duplicates the content of the PDF or to
existing web content that provides more detailed and well organized
presentations of the programs described in the brochures? If time and
money were not an issue I would probably advocate for all three but even
though I work for the government I still live in the real world and I
really am here to help. <grin/>
By the way I highly recommend Karen's Book "Accessible and Usable PDF
Documents: Techniques for Document Authors" to anyone who is responsible
for creating or remediating PDFs.
Mike Moore
From: Duff Johnson
Date: Fri, Oct 01 2010 8:45AM
Subject: Re: Printable Brochures
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> You are both correct we can make the PDFs directly accessible (mostly). The issue that we have
> with the PDFs is the way that they are created in inDesign. These brochures are, as Karen
> describes in her book, fragile PDFs. The remediation is very time consuming and often only
> limited in success and we are talking about a large number of brochures. We also do not have
> access to the original inDesign files or the assets used to create them.
Ah... not having access to the original ID files certainly makes things harder... but surely, tagging the PDFs would be a lot easier than converting PDFs to decent-looking AND accessible HTML!
> I believe, but may be swayed otherwise by the bright minds in this group, that even after
> remediation that the brochures will not be accessible to everyone. By default the visual reading
> order is incorrect until you print and fold the brochure. I am aware of reflow, but I do not
> believe that the average person on the street has ever seen that feature.
Reflow cannot help at all with a folding brochure because reflow is page-based - it does not follow logical structure across pages.
> I am not even sure if all PDF readers have the feature, Adobe is not the only game in town.
Correct, most PDF viewers do not have this feature.
> I
> have seen problems with overlapping text in reflow view, particularly when magnification is
> applied.
> This may be another manifestation of the fragile nature of the PDFs that we are working
> with and the techniques used by the media artists working in inDesign. I have not even mentioned
> the real world issue that many (most who I have spoken with personally) screen reader users (my
> personal experience is primarily with JAWS users) regard the PDF format with deep suspicion and
> approach all PDFs as if they were inaccessible.
...which is entirely understandable given that the vast majority of PDF authors fail to tag their PDFs at all, let alone tag them for accessibility.
That situation, however, is changing, albeit slowly.
> So my original question remains. Which is the better alternative, a link to a text transcript
> that duplicates the content of the PDF or to existing web content that provides more detailed and
> well organized presentations of the programs described in the brochures? If time and money were not an issue I would probably advocate for all three but even though I work for the government I
> still live in the real world and I really am here to help. <grin/>
To begin with, the answer is content-dependant.
If the content is just simple text, then a text transcript would be adequate. If the content includes elements that require structure (such as tables), then you need to choose a solution that accommodates such structures (such as HTML or tagged PDF).
> By the way I highly recommend Karen's Book "Accessible and Usable PDF Documents: Techniques for Document Authors" to anyone who is responsible for creating or remediating PDFs.
Seconded!
Duff Johnson
Appligent Document Solutions
http://www.appligent.com
Blog: http://www.appligent.com/talkingpdf
Tweets: http://www.twitter.com/duffjohnson