Karen asked
me to forward this comment since she is having difficulty posting to
the list.
This is difficult to
answer. First a PDF can be tagged but this does not mean that it is
accessible. Second, the tools that I know of that generate tagged PDF
use various versions of the PDF specifications/references. Since
tagging is improved with each version of Adobe Acrobat/each version of
the PDF specs/references, you can see why it is difficult to pin
something down.
Adobe Acrobat and
the Microsoft Save as PDF tool for Microsoft Office 2007 use the PDF
1.7 specs so Acrobat 8 level of tagging.
The latest version
of Nuance tools use the PDF 1.6 specs so are at the Acrobat 7 level.
I am not sure what
the latest version of Open Office uses for its underlying specs.
Acrobat is the only
tool I know of for making tagged forms. This is done through Acrobat
and to some extent LiveCycle Designer; however, you need to be careful
using LiveCycle Designer.
The Save as PDF tool
from Microsoft tends to generate better tagged PDF from the .doc or
.docx format while Acrobat tends to generate better tags for the .doc
format. Acrobat does not produce tagged PDF from Microsoft Publisher,
while the Save as PDF tool does for Publisher 2007; Acrobat does
generate tagged PDF from Outlook 2007 while the Save as PDF does not.
Acrobat also produces tagged PDF from Outlook 2003.
InDesign and
FrameMaker can produce tagged PDF, depending on the version. I’ve heard
that the new Quark CS also can export to tagged PDF but have not found
any documentation of this so far…none seems to be on their web site or
in any “new features” documentation and I would have thought that it
would be easy to find since this has long been a complaint of the
software.
An accessible PDF
depends on the source document being compiled of non-corrupted assets
[in the case of desktop published documents], headings made with
styles, tables being made properly, Alt Text on images and links, lists
being converted as lists not individual paragraphs/again the use of
styles, and the content flowing logically. Elements of documents that
throw this off are text boxes in word processed documents, paragraph
frames, Tabs used to create tables, no styles in the document, and in
the case of desktop published documents, there are issues with links
that are mouse activated but cannot be activated using the keyboard so
must be repaired in the PDF document. Desktop published documents also
tend to have more “images of text” rather than text. This means that
content is not available to the end-user once it is tagged. You can
only put so much into an Alt attribute.
I don’t know of any
research or survey that looks at the various tools and compares them.
It gets difficult since there are so many variables for documents. For
example, I can use OnmiPage Pro to generate a tagged PDF but it does
not generate tagged tables so these have to be done manually in the PDF
document, as does adding Alt Text and links to the document. This adds
to the repair cost and makes OmniPage a less than worthy tool to
generate tagged PDF. The last I looked, Nuance’s PDF Creator did not
generate tagged PDF but if they have added it, it will be at the PDF
1.6 spec level.
Even among the
versions of Acrobat, version 8 has better OCR for scanned documents
than 7 did and better table tagging.
I have some of the
other tools but rely on Acrobat and now the Save as PDF tool for
tagging the PDF, then I go in and see what repairs need to be made.
Ultimately, the Tags Tree should accurately represent the visual
structure of the document where you are adding the tags while the
source documents should have generated fairly solid tags if the
document was designed to be accessible in the source application. This
would not include decorative elements which should be delegated as
Artifacts. So many variables.
Cheers, Karen
Dear
all
I
am looking for a list of PDF generators to produce accessible PDF in
accordance with Adobes guidelines. Is anyone aware of such a list or a
study that evaluates PDF generators for accessibility?
Kind
regards
Lars
----
Lars Ballieu Christensen
Rådgiver/Adviser, Sensus ApS
Specialister
i tilgængelighed/Accessibility Consultants
Tel: +45 48 22 10 03 – Mobil: +45 40 32 68 23 - Skype: Ballieu
Mail: lbc@sensus.dk – Web: www.sensus.dk & www.robobraille.org
