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Thread: Recommended method for identifying a line in an "Accessible PDF"
Number of posts in this thread: 3 (In chronological order)
From: julian.rickards@ndm.gov.on.ca
Date: Mon, Feb 17 2003 8:42AM
Subject: Recommended method for identifying a line in an "Accessible PDF"
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Hi:
This is somewhat off topic in that most of the discussions on this list
revolve around HTML and CSS with regard to Accessibility. However, I am
trying to create an accessible pdf and for the most part, know what I am
doing but for some reason, a horizontal rule in Word 2002 is flagged by
Acrobat's Accessibility Checker - the checker wants the line to have
alternate text. In the past, I have simply been inserting "---" (three
hyphens) as the Alternate Text. Does anyone have a better idea?
These next two questions may assist with the answer. If someone were to put
a graphical horizontal line in a web page, what would one write as its alt
text? OR, what does a web page reader say when it encounters a horizontal
rule?
Jules
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From: James Gagnier
Date: Mon, Feb 17 2003 9:10AM
Subject: Re: Recommended method for identifying a line in an "Accessible PDF"
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Hi:
In response to the questions, The standards state that such items as
horizontal graphical bars bullets and spacers should have alt="" as the alt
text. For most screen reading technology, this will silence the graphic
from being spoken. Since the graphic offers no meaningful content, it does
not need to be spoken. In the case of Jaws all versions out of the box, it
will read the filename of the graphic if no alt tag is present but due to a
bug in the software, it will still read the file name if the graphic has
alt="".
On a similar matter, if the horizontal rule is used to separate a section,
an alt tag with the next section's title may be used for more clarity, that
is assuming that the text following it isn't marked up with heading <h1>,
<h2>, etc. which it should be to offer logical structure to the document.
James
James Gagnier
Accessibility Analyst
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Sent: Monday, February 17, 2003 10:31 AM
Subject: Recommended method for identifying a line in an "Accessible PDF"
Hi:
This is somewhat off topic in that most of the discussions on this list
revolve around HTML and CSS with regard to Accessibility. However, I am
trying to create an accessible pdf and for the most part, know what I am
doing but for some reason, a horizontal rule in Word 2002 is flagged by
Acrobat's Accessibility Checker - the checker wants the line to have
alternate text. In the past, I have simply been inserting "---" (three
hyphens) as the Alternate Text. Does anyone have a better idea?
These next two questions may assist with the answer. If someone were to put
a graphical horizontal line in a web page, what would one write as its alt
text? OR, what does a web page reader say when it encounters a horizontal
rule?
Jules
----
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From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Mon, Feb 17 2003 12:30PM
Subject: Re: Recommended method for identifying a line in an "Accessible PDF"
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On Mon, 17 Feb 2003, James Gagnier wrote:
> In response to the questions, The standards state that such items as
> horizontal graphical bars bullets and spacers should have alt="" as the alt
> text.
They do? I wouldn't say anything that categorical.
> Since the graphic offers no meaningful content, it does
> not need to be spoken.
What matters is what the graphic is meant to express, in the context of
its use, not what it contains per se.
> On a similar matter, if the horizontal rule is used to separate a section,
> an alt tag with the next section's title may be used for more clarity, that
> is assuming that the text following it isn't marked up with heading <h1>,
> <h2>, etc. which it should be to offer logical structure to the document.
If a document is divided into parts with the use of headings, and with
additional hints given as horizontal bars presented as images, then
alt="" is usually sufficient, since the headings probably are informative
enough. But alt="End of section." wouldn't be wrong. If an image of a
horizontal bar is the _only_ way of indicating a major division, e.g.
at the end of the document content proper, before authorship information
and other details, I would say that a nonempty alt attribute is a must.
It should then be primarily formulated to be useful in speech
presentation, since in visual presentation, the user can usually see the
structure from the appearance. Some more notes on this:
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html/alt.html#hr
--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
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