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Number of posts in this thread: 8 (In chronological order)

From: Eric Scheibler
Date: Thu, Sep 22 2011 7:57AM
Subject: creation of Accessible PDF documents
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Hello everyone,

I want to create an accessible pdf document and for this I need your help.
I'am a tutor for the lecture "accessible documents" at the computer
science faculty at the TU Dresden. In one exercise of this lecture the
students should create a small, accessible pdf document. If possible the
job should be doable without using commercial software especially not
Adobe Acrobat. I searched for open source software and found Open Office
which seems to work relativly well.
At the moment I try to create the solution for this exercise cause I
need something to show them. My document only contains some examples of
document elements like an image, a list and a table. I exported the
document to pdf and checked it with the "PDF Accessibility Checker"
(from
http://www.access-for-all.ch/en/pdf-werkstatt/pdf-accessibility-checker-pac/download-pac.html).

But PAC shows me two errors:
1. The tab order of page 1 is not based on the document structure (same
with page 2)
2. Structural tagging errors have been found (for example incomplete
paragraphs and headings)

I don't know how to fix these issues in Open Office. Is this possible or
am I forced to use Adobe Acrobat after exporting to fix that?
I've uploaded the file and the report:
http://eric-scheibler.de/accessible_pdf.zip

Maybe someone can look at the file and give me a useful hint
Thank you in advance

Best regards
Eric Scheibler

From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Thu, Sep 22 2011 8:18AM
Subject: Re: creation of Accessible PDF documents
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I'am a tutor for the lecture "accessible documents" at the computer science faculty at the TU Dresden. In one exercise of this lecture the students should create a small, accessible pdf document. If possible the job should be doable without using commercial software especially not Adobe Acrobat. I searched for open source software and found Open Office which seems to work relativly well.

AWK: Why "especially not Adobe Acrobat"? Trying to add extra challenges to the task by not allowing the most capable general-purpose tool for working with PDF documents? :)

I don't know how to fix these issues in Open Office. Is this possible or am I forced to use Adobe Acrobat after exporting to fix that?

AWK: You might want to log a bug on open office to fix this issue in their output, but until they fix that you may need a commercial tool since I'm not aware of any free tool that handles this.

AWK

From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Thu, Sep 22 2011 8:24AM
Subject: Re: creation of Accessible PDF documents
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Deborah,
There is nothing prohibiting any tool from either creating the PDF correctly in the first place or implementing a feature to address such a limitation. Students at universities often get significant discounts on software such as Adobe Acrobat, so if it is the best tool for the job then why not use it?

I'd be perfectly happy if the sentence read "we want to do the entire process with open source software if possible." But it didn't say that, it said that the desire was to not use commercial software, _especially_ Acrobat, singling out a specific tool, which is different than stating a broad intent to keep PDF production free.

Thanks,
AWK

Andrew Kirkpatrick
Group Product Manager, Accessibility
Adobe Systems

= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
http://twitter.com/awkawk
http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility

From: deborah.kaplan
Date: Thu, Sep 22 2011 8:30AM
Subject: Re: creation of Accessible PDF documents
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Andrew wrote:

> Why "especially not Adobe Acrobat"? Trying to add extra challenges to the task by not allowing the most capable general-purpose tool for working with PDF documents? :)

Well, for one thing, it's not free. It seems counterproductive to
the movement of having everything online be accessible if we
reserve creating accessible documents to that group of people who
can afford commercial software.

-Deborah

From: Christophe Strobbe
Date: Thu, Sep 22 2011 11:27AM
Subject: Re: creation of Accessible PDF documents
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Hi Andrew,

At 16:14 22-9-2011, Andrew Kirkpatrick wrote:
>I don't know how to fix these issues in Open Office. Is this
>possible or am I forced to use Adobe Acrobat after exporting to fix that?
>
>AWK: You might want to log a bug on open office to fix this issue in
>their output, but until they fix that you may need a commercial tool
>since I'm not aware of any free tool that handles this.

This bug has already been reported two time:
* <http://openoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=102960>;: "Support
for document Tab order when exporting to PDF" (June 2009)
* <http://openoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=116665>;: "tab order
inconsistent with structure order in tagged PDF" (January 2011).

One of the OpenOffice contributors asked: "What is the concrete
accessibility problem while using [a document where 'tab order may be
inconsistent with the structure order']?" And he/she added: "Actually
I don't really understand what this Error means as long as the
document can be traveled consistently with tab..." If this cannot be
clearly communicated, I have little hope that developers will get
motivated to fix the issue. (Same with LibreOffice, where this bug
has not been logged yet.)

Best regards,

Christophe


--
Christophe Strobbe
K.U.Leuven - Dept. of Electrical Engineering - SCD
Research Group on Document Architectures
Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 bus 2442
B-3001 Leuven-Heverlee
BELGIUM
tel: +32 16 32 85 51
http://www.docarch.be/
Twitter: @RabelaisA11y
---
Open source for accessibility: results from the AEGIS project
www.aegis-project.eu
---
Please don't invite me to Facebook, Quechup or other "social
networks". You may have agreed to their "privacy policy", but I haven't.

From: Eric Scheibler
Date: Fri, Sep 23 2011 4:09AM
Subject: Re: creation of Accessible PDF documents
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Hello,

ok misunderstanding. The reason why I wrote "especially not Adobe
Acrobat" is that I want to prevent an answer like "just use Acrobat to
correct this after export". My intension is, like Deborah also wrote, to
give the students a way to produce a simple, accessible pdf document
with free open source tools. Yes, the university has bought a few
licenses of Adobe Acrobat but then 40 students must use two or three
PC's and can't do it at home. And after the one exercise they will never
do it again cause of missing software.
I also searched for a method to do it with free software cause I pland
to write a short tutorial. This should not be directed to professionals
but to individuals who are interested in accessibility. This people
don't buy expensive software to insure that pdf's are accessible too. To
use Open Office or something similar would be a nice way for them.

Just think about what would happen if we had the same situation for
producing accessible html pages. Only one expansive software could
create an accessible version of the page... how many web pages would be
accessible today?

I understand the first error but what about the second, the incomplete
paragraphs and headings? Also an Open Office export error?

If the errors can't be corrected by me, I have two choices: change it to
use Acrobat with the disadvantages I listed above or stay with Open
Office and the errors. What about the second option: how problematic are
these errors for the user? I tested my pdf with Jaws and NVDA and can't
find a problem while navigating. How would you rate that? Better such a
non perfect pdf than nothing or if accessible then perfectly without errors?
Or maybe I should include Acrobat in the exercise but also mention that
they at least should use Open Office if they can't use Acrobat in the
future.

Best regards
Eric Scheibler

From: ckrugman
Date: Sun, Oct 30 2011 7:12AM
Subject: Re: creation of Accessible PDF documents
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its my understanding that Open Office is still inaccessible to JAWS users
although I haven't personally tried it in a couple of years.
Chuck
----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew Kirkpatrick" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
To: "WebAIM Discussion List" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2011 7:14 AM
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] creation of Accessible PDF documents


> I'am a tutor for the lecture "accessible documents" at the computer
> science faculty at the TU Dresden. In one exercise of this lecture the
> students should create a small, accessible pdf document. If possible the
> job should be doable without using commercial software especially not
> Adobe Acrobat. I searched for open source software and found Open Office
> which seems to work relativly well.
>
> AWK: Why "especially not Adobe Acrobat"? Trying to add extra challenges
> to the task by not allowing the most capable general-purpose tool for
> working with PDF documents? :)
>
> I don't know how to fix these issues in Open Office. Is this possible or
> am I forced to use Adobe Acrobat after exporting to fix that?
>
> AWK: You might want to log a bug on open office to fix this issue in their
> output, but until they fix that you may need a commercial tool since I'm
> not aware of any free tool that handles this.
>
> AWK
>

From: ckrugman
Date: Sun, Oct 30 2011 3:54PM
Subject: Re: creation of Accessible PDF documents
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I realize that this is a late post but there are serious issues with the
accessibility of some of the free software as I've previously stated Open
Office is not accessible for screen reader users. There are also problems
with some of the quality of documents produced by what I refer to as the
copycat PDF creator programs when an attempt is made to read the created
document with screen reading software.
Chuck
----- Original Message -----
From: "Eric Scheibler" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
To: "WebAIM Discussion List" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
Sent: Friday, September 23, 2011 3:11 AM
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] creation of Accessible PDF documents


> Hello,
>
> ok misunderstanding. The reason why I wrote "especially not Adobe
> Acrobat" is that I want to prevent an answer like "just use Acrobat to
> correct this after export". My intension is, like Deborah also wrote, to
> give the students a way to produce a simple, accessible pdf document
> with free open source tools. Yes, the university has bought a few
> licenses of Adobe Acrobat but then 40 students must use two or three
> PC's and can't do it at home. And after the one exercise they will never
> do it again cause of missing software.
> I also searched for a method to do it with free software cause I pland
> to write a short tutorial. This should not be directed to professionals
> but to individuals who are interested in accessibility. This people
> don't buy expensive software to insure that pdf's are accessible too. To
> use Open Office or something similar would be a nice way for them.
>
> Just think about what would happen if we had the same situation for
> producing accessible html pages. Only one expansive software could
> create an accessible version of the page... how many web pages would be
> accessible today?
>
> I understand the first error but what about the second, the incomplete
> paragraphs and headings? Also an Open Office export error?
>
> If the errors can't be corrected by me, I have two choices: change it to
> use Acrobat with the disadvantages I listed above or stay with Open
> Office and the errors. What about the second option: how problematic are
> these errors for the user? I tested my pdf with Jaws and NVDA and can't
> find a problem while navigating. How would you rate that? Better such a
> non perfect pdf than nothing or if accessible then perfectly without
> errors?
> Or maybe I should include Acrobat in the exercise but also mention that
> they at least should use Open Office if they can't use Acrobat in the
> future.
>
> Best regards
> Eric Scheibler
>