[Accessibleweb] AccessibleWeb Meeting Minutes - April 28, 2005

[Rick Ells]

    AccessibleWeb at u Meeting - April 28, 2005
    Accessible PDF - Terry Thompson (tft at u.washington.edu)

     I. PDF files
          A. UW Accessible PDF How-to
             http://staff.washington.edu/tft/pdf.html
               1. Summarizes the new Adobe document about Version 7 PDF
          B. As of Acrobat version 5, came out with a new PDF format
               1. Not possible to structure PDF before
               2. Makes possible Tagged Structure
          C. 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
                    a. Office products support it
                    b. Adobe products
    II. HTML - what makes it accessible
          A. W3C has 65 checkpoints
               1. Alternative text for graphic
               2. Use logical headings, which screenreader can use to
                  navigate
                    a. Hitting h key for Jaws goes from header to header
               3. Structure of tables useful
                    a. Headers in table and relationship to cells - reads
                       header then reads the cell
                    b. 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
          B. HTML is designed to be accessible if you do it right
    III. Can you make PDF accessible?
          A. Can go directly from well-structured HTML to PDF
               1. Creates a tagged PDF
          B. Can use Word to create PDFs
               1. Does not create table structure
                    a. 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
                    a. Use Format Picture, go to Web tab
                    b. 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.
                    a. On Settings tab: check Enable accessibility and
                       reflow with Tagged PDF
                    b. On Security tab: If you set a password, check
                       Enable text access for screen reader devices for
                       the visually impaired
                    c. 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.
                    a. If you do a major update of Office, you may need to
                       reinstall Acrobat
               8. Word users should use styles
          C. Types of PDF
               1. Unstructured - Image file - just a bitmap image
                    a. 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.
                    b. 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
                              a. Use Touch-up Object tool
                         4. Can manipulate the reading order
               2. Text, but not tagged
               3. Tagged PDF
                    a. Still may need to add alternate text, manipulate
                       sequence, check structure
          D. 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.
                    a. Can go to each table cell and add alternate text
               2. Should check order
    IV. Discussion
          A. Is there any talk of in-house people making accessible PDF
             forms?
               1. To make a PDF form accessible
                    a. The tab order should be logical
                         1. Forms designed to be navigated by tabbing
                    b. Should identify what field you are in
          B. 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
          C. City of Auburn employment application
               1. http://resources.ci.auburn.wa.us/WEB/JobPostings/Inte
                  ractiveEmploymentApp.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.


  |- Rick Ells - 543-2875 - rells at cac.washington.edu - Rm 011S MGH Bldg -|
  |-                http://staff.washington.edu/rells/                  -|