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Thread: Accessibility assessment of pdfs.
Number of posts in this thread: 8 (In chronological order)
From: Nancy Johnson
Date: Wed, Oct 24 2012 7:26AM
Subject: Accessibility assessment of pdfs.
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Hi
I have a request from my company to do an accessibility assessment of pdfs
on their sites.
Since we are an engineering division only do technical accessibility and
not content accessibility, We do not have anything to do with PDFs, videos
or other content related items. There may be 100 or more pdfs on each
site... some may be recent, some old.
Question1: is there any software that could globally look at all the pdfs
on the site or page globally and identify those which are not tagged
correctly. Some may go back before Office 2007.
Question2: Three years ago the site added a dynamic pdf form. This is xml
database driven form, with little static content. I was told at the time,
there was no way to get proper tags on it. Does anyone know if there has
been a change.
Thanks,
Nancy
From: Duff Johnson
Date: Wed, Oct 24 2012 7:52AM
Subject: Re: Accessibility assessment of pdfs.
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Nancy,
> Question1: is there any software that could globally look at all the pdfs
> on the site or page globally and identify those which are not tagged
> correctly. Some may go back before Office 2007.
Well, since you asked, I have to answer, right? ;-)
Please see our CommonLook Clarity product for this requirement:
http://www.commonlook.com/CommonLook-Clarity
> Question2: Three years ago the site added a dynamic pdf form. This is xml
> database driven form, with little static content. I was told at the time,
> there was no way to get proper tags on it. Does anyone know if there has
> been a change.
Depending on the design, XFA-PDF forms can be made reasonably accessible, however such forms aren't "tagged" in the conventional sense (i.e., like "normal" PDF documents and forms). You will need to use documentation specific to XFA-PDF in order to attempt to make such forms accessible.
Best regards,
Duff Johnson
President, NetCentric US
ISO 32000 Intl. Project Co-Leader, US Chair
ISO 14289 US Chair
PDF Association Vice-Chair
Office: +1 617 401 8140
Mobile: +1 617 283 4226
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
www.net-centric.com
This e-mail message is confidential, may be privileged and is intended for the exclusive use of the addressee(s). Any other person is strictly prohibited from disclosing, distributing or reproducing it. If the addressee(s) cannot be reached or is unknown to you, please inform the sender by return e-mail immediately and delete this e-mail message and destroy all copies.
From: Corbett, James
Date: Wed, Oct 24 2012 8:01AM
Subject: Re: Accessibility assessment of pdfs.
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Duff:
Is there a demo / evaluation version?
Jim
From: Duff Johnson
Date: Wed, Oct 24 2012 1:16PM
Subject: Re: Accessibility assessment of pdfs.
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Jim,
As of this moment you need to get in touch with us to get a demonstration scan and set of reports on your site. A trial license of the software will be available for download within weeks.
Duff.
On Oct 24, 2012, at 10:01 AM, Corbett, James wrote:
> Duff:
>
> Is there a demo / evaluation version?
>
> Jim
>
>
From: Corbett, James
Date: Wed, Oct 24 2012 1:18PM
Subject: Re: Accessibility assessment of pdfs.
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Duff:
I'll pass that on.
Jim
From: Lucy Greco
Date: Wed, Oct 24 2012 3:12PM
Subject: Re: Accessibility assessment of pdfs.
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Duff please be sure to send us all the info when the demo is ready
On 10/24/12, Corbett, James < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Duff:
>
> I'll pass that on.
>
> Jim
>
>
From: Steve Green
Date: Wed, Oct 24 2012 4:11PM
Subject: Re: Accessibility assessment of pdfs.
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As with all automated testing, the CommonLook tool can only perform some of
the necessary tests with certainty. For instance it may be able to tell if a
document does not contain any headings at all, but if there are heading tags
it can't tell if they have been applied properly. It can check that images
have alternate text but it cannot tell if that text is appropriate.
To test PDFs fully, it is necessary to do some degree of manual testing, and
that is often prohibitively expensive. If that's a route you want to go
down, we offer that service as do others on this list. Fixing them is even
more expensive, and again there are several of us who can help with that.
Where you have a lot of legacy PDFs, a pragmatic approach might be to test
them all with an automated tool and test a small sample manually to get a
general assessment of the quality of tagging (if indeed they are tagged).
You will then know how good they could be made and if they are fixable at
all - sometimes they are not, depending on how they were authored.
Next, look at your server logs to see how often they are downloaded and
which are the most popular. If the figures are high you may choose to fix
the most popular ones. The rest I recommend you leave, and put a notice on
the website saying you will provide an accessible version on demand within a
reasonable timescale.
Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd
From: Duff Johnson
Date: Thu, Oct 25 2012 9:49AM
Subject: Re: Accessibility assessment of pdfs.
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Steve,
In general, I agree with you, but want to add a few clarifications.
On Oct 24, 2012, at 6:11 PM, Steve Green wrote:
> As with all automated testing, the CommonLook tool can only perform some of
> the necessary tests with certainty. For instance it may be able to tell if a
> document does not contain any headings at all, but if there are heading tags
> it can't tell if they have been applied properly. It can check that images
> have alternate text but it cannot tell if that text is appropriate.
This is totally true - but I'd just add (since people seem to want to talk about our product)
1) CommonLook Clarity allows for the use of Regular Expressions to *help* identify "bad" alt. text. Examples include: text that's obviously a file-name (because it ends in ".jpg" or similar), or alt. text that's less than two words.
2) The product recognizes and implements the concept of "User Verification Required" in its workflows. For alternative text, to take that example, CommonLook Clarity defaults to assuming that "User verification is required" in order to assess the quality of any alternative text.
> Where you have a lot of legacy PDFs, a pragmatic approach might be to test
> them all with an automated tool and test a small sample manually to get a
> general assessment of the quality of tagging (if indeed they are tagged).
> You will then know how good they could be made and if they are fixable at
> all - sometimes they are not, depending on how they were authored.
CommonLook Clarity was designed to facilitate precisely these sorts of workflows, not by assuming that automated checks can resolve the question of accessibility, but simply by making it possible to drive prioritization with data.
Example:
If a PDF includes data tables and if the PDF is tagged
AND
If the tables all include column and/or row headers
AND
If all the images have alt. text that passes automated checks
AND
There are no untagged elements in the PDF
AND
There's no use of color, no scripts, etc, I could go on)
THEN it's highly likely that the PDF is not only tagged, but already quality-controlled, at least at some level. This sort of information really helps with prioritization, and also with measuring results.
Ok
end of Marketing Speech! We now return to your regally scheduled program!
I hope to meet (some of) you in San Francisco next Monday morning!
Best regards,
Duff Johnson
President, NetCentric US (Makers of CommonLook)
ISO 32000 Intl. Project Co-Leader, US Chair
ISO 14289 US Chair
PDF Association Vice-Chair
Office: +1 617 401 8140
Mobile: +1 617 283 4226
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
www.net-centric.com
This e-mail message is confidential, may be privileged and is intended for the exclusive use of the addressee(s). Any other person is strictly prohibited from disclosing, distributing or reproducing it. If the addressee(s) cannot be reached or is unknown to you, please inform the sender by return e-mail immediately and delete this e-mail message and destroy all copies.