- From: Duff Johnson <duff@duff-johnson.com>
- Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2014 11:59:27 -0500
- To: "Homme, James" <james.homme@highmark.com>
- Cc: "w3c-wai-ig@w3.org Group" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Jim, I wish I could say that PDF repair was accessible. Alas, I cannot. First, because we don't yet have software that can do a great tagging job auto-magically. Second, because the process of fixing accessibility features in PDF is akin to the process of writing alternative text. In other words, it's damned hard to do unless you can fully perceive the thing you are describing. Think of tags in PDF as a means of describing the semantics of *whatever* content that happens to be on the PDF page. Correlating the page content with the logical structure that expresses the semantics for AT purposes is far from trivial. As my friend Olaf likes to say: a PDF file is like a loaf of bread. It's baked. Sure, you can theoretically grind it into crumbs and fashion a new loaf from the results, but it's far, far easier to just bake it correctly (i.e., ensure it's accessible) when it's first created. Duff.
Received on Friday, 14 February 2014 17:00:09 UTC