AccessibleWeb@u Meeting - April 28, 2005
  1. PDF files
    1. UW Accessible PDF How-to
      http://staff.washington.edu/tft/pdf.html
      1. Summarizes the new Adobe document about Version 7 PDF
    2. As of Acrobat version 5, came out with a new PDF format
      1. Not possible to structure PDF before
      2. Makes possible Tagged Structure
    3. For PDF to be accessible
      1. Adobe must do its thing
      2. Accessibility software has to be able to read it
      3. Publishing software has to support it
        1. Office products support it
        2. Adobe products
  2. HTML - what makes it accessible
    1. W3C has 65 checkpoints
      1. Alternative text for graphic
      2. Use logical headings, which screenreader can use to navigate
        1. Hitting h key for Jaws goes from header to header
      3. Structure of tables useful
        1. Headers in table and relationship to cells - reads header then reads the cell
        2. More complex tables - Jaws will read each level of header above cell - understands colspans and rowspans
          1. Use" th" to identify table headers
          2. Every header has to have an id. Example: <th id="costs">Costs</th>
          3. In cells, use "headers" attribute to list ids of all headers referring to the cell:
            Example: <td headers="costs">$300</td>
          4. A table wizard plug-in is now available for DreamWeaver
    2. HTML is designed to be accessible if you do it right
  3. Can you make PDF accessible?
    1. Can go directly from well-structured HTML to PDF
      1. Creates a tagged PDF
    2. Can use Word to create PDFs
      1. Does not create table structure
        1. JAWS does not pick up on tables
      2. Does create headers, but JAWS does not currently access headers within PDFs created from Word documents
      3. Can add alternate text
        1. Use Format Picture, go to Web tab
        2. Only useful when creating HTML from the Word document
      4. Can add structure by using styles
      5. Use Adobe Acrobat PDF Conversion settings, available in the "Adobe PDF" pulldown menu in Office applications when you have Adobe Acrobat installed.
        1. On Settings tab: check Enable accessibility and reflow with Tagged PDF
        2. On Security tab: If you set a password, check Enable text access for screen reader devices for the visually impaired
        3. On Bookmarks tab: check with Word styles to use in generated a nested Table of Contents
      6. Use Adobe PDF->Convert to Adobe PDF to create PDF file
      7. For it to work right, need to install Office, then install Adobe Acrobat.
        1. If you do a major update of Office, you may need to reinstall Acrobat
      8. Word users should use styles
    3. Types of PDF
      1. Unstructured - Image file - just a bitmap image
        1. Reader can scan image and try to extract text with OCR
          1. Can "find all OCR suspects" - can walk through document correcting text it can't interpret.
          2. Resulting document is not optimized for accessibility. Can check properties to see if it has Tagged PDF.
          3. Often gets the read order wrong with complex objects.
        2. In Acrobat, can evaluate your document for accessibility
          1. Gives you a detailed report on what needs to be corrected to make document accessibility
          2. Can add tags
          3. Can add alt text for figures
            1. Use Touch-up Object tool
          4. Can manipulate the reading order
      2. Text, but not tagged
      3. Tagged PDF
        1. Still may need to add alternate text, manipulate sequence, check structure
    4. Creating PDF from a Word document created using styles and saved as a PDF from the Adobe PDF menu works reasonably well
      1. Tables do not have ids or headers attributes.
        1. Can go to each table cell and add alternate text
      2. Should check order
  4. Discussion
    1. Is there any talk of in-house people making accessible PDF forms?
      1. To make a PDF form accessible
        1. The tab order should be logical
          1. Forms designed to be navigated by tabbing
        2. Should identify what field you are in
    2. IRS 1040 form is accessible tagged PDF
      1. http://www.irs.gov/app/scripts/retriever.jsp
      2. Someone actually put in a tooltip for each field in the form
    3. City of Auburn employment application
      1. http://resources.ci.auburn.wa.us/WEB/JobPostings/InteractiveEmploymentApp.pdf
      2. Uses a font that is non-standard - font not Unicode supported. The application cannot be interpreted by adaptive technologies. Document was created with PageMaker 7.
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