WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Thread: Accessible PDF from MS Publisher Document

for

Number of posts in this thread: 5 (In chronological order)

From: Moore, Michael
Date: Mon, Jun 09 2008 2:50PM
Subject: Accessible PDF from MS Publisher Document
No previous message | Next message →

Does anyone know of a relatively painless way to create an accessible
PDF from an MS publisher source document? The document in question is a
newsletter with a table of contents, information displayed in three
columns on each page and images. I have been able to add alternative
text to the meaningful images but am struggling to do anything that will
fix the reading order, the heading structure, or hide the background
images without significant cleanup of the PDF. I am working with
Publisher 2003.

Thanks,

Mike Moore

From: Bevi Chagnon
Date: Mon, Jun 09 2008 3:30PM
Subject: Re: Accessible PDF from MS Publisher Document
← Previous message | Next message →

<< Does anyone know of a relatively painless way to create an accessible PDF
from an MS publisher >>

"Painless" and "MS Publisher" in the same sentence.

Ha ha ha! You're so funny Mike!

You might try extracting the text out of Publisher and rebuilding the
document in InDesign, then export it to PDF. Might be faster than fixing a
lousy PDF from Publisher.

--Bevi Chagnon

........................................................................
Bevi Chagnon | Adobe ACE: InDesign CS2 | www.PubCom.com
PubCom | Trainers, Consultants, Designers for Web, Print & Acrobat
Bevi's online tutorials | http://www.CommunityMX.com/author.cfm?cid=5931
........................................................................

From: John E. Brandt
Date: Mon, Jun 09 2008 8:40PM
Subject: Re: Accessible PDF from MS Publisher Document
← Previous message | Next message →

Adobe Acrobat Professional will allow you to test and repair the document.
But be aware that depending on the layout, it may be a fair amount of work.
The conversion to InDesign is also another option, but my limited experience
with this has not always brought about good results. You might want to
consider converting the original document to HTML to make it completely
accessible.



John E. Brandt
Augusta, Maine USA
www.jebswebs.com


-----Original Message-----
From: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
[mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ] On Behalf Of Moore, Michael
Sent: Monday, June 09, 2008 4:48 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List; Discussion list for web and software
accessibility issues
Subject: [WebAIM] Accessible PDF from MS Publisher Document

Does anyone know of a relatively painless way to create an accessible
PDF from an MS publisher source document? The document in question is a
newsletter with a table of contents, information displayed in three
columns on each page and images. I have been able to add alternative
text to the meaningful images but am struggling to do anything that will
fix the reading order, the heading structure, or hide the background
images without significant cleanup of the PDF. I am working with
Publisher 2003.

Thanks,

Mike Moore

From: Sean Keegan
Date: Tue, Jun 10 2008 2:00PM
Subject: Re: Accessible PDF from MS Publisher Document
← Previous message | Next message →

> Does anyone know of a relatively painless way to
> create an accessible PDF from an MS publisher source document?

I used to play with Publisher a bit and found that there was a significant
amount of work I had to do to clean up the resulting file in Acrobat Pro 8.
My "solution" was to learn InDesign and start from that authoring
environment. I still had to do some clean-up in Acrobat when publishing out
of InDesign, but it was less than the when using Publisher 2003.

Using Publisher 2008 and the "Publish as PDF or XPS" option, you will get a
tagged PDF but it looks like you will need to do some clean-up of the
reading order. You can set up the document with headings, though, and this
will be carried over (then again, if you are already having to fix reading
order, setting headings in Acrobat is trivial).

Take care,
Sean



From: Moore, Michael
Date: Tue, Jun 10 2008 3:00PM
Subject: Re: Accessible PDF from MS Publisher Document
← Previous message | No next message

Thanks everybody for your input. I am still trying to convince the
folks making the request to abandon publisher as the primary format for
the newsletter in question. Its sort of like using a machine gun to
till your garden. It works, it's fun, but the result is not really what
you wanted.

If I can't convince them then I guess I will be spending some time on
the conversion process with Adobe Pro.

m

-----Original Message-----
From: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
[mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ] On Behalf Of Sean Keegan
Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 2:52 PM
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List'
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Accessible PDF from MS Publisher Document

> Does anyone know of a relatively painless way to create an accessible
> PDF from an MS publisher source document?

I used to play with Publisher a bit and found that there was a
significant amount of work I had to do to clean up the resulting file in
Acrobat Pro 8.
My "solution" was to learn InDesign and start from that authoring
environment. I still had to do some clean-up in Acrobat when publishing
out of InDesign, but it was less than the when using Publisher 2003.

Using Publisher 2008 and the "Publish as PDF or XPS" option, you will
get a tagged PDF but it looks like you will need to do some clean-up of
the reading order. You can set up the document with headings, though,
and this will be carried over (then again, if you are already having to
fix reading order, setting headings in Acrobat is trivial).

Take care,
Sean