Re: PDF accessibility guidelines. WAS: Re: PDF's and Signatures

until I find a way that works reliably I tell everyone to not consider pdf 
documents to be accessible

Bob


On Thu, 22 Jan 2015, Thompson, Rachel wrote:

> Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 09:06:57 -0600
> From: "Thompson, Rachel" <rsthompson2@ua.edu>
> To: Duff Johnson <duff@duff-johnson.com>,
>     "w3c-wai-ig@w3.org" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
> Subject: PDF accessibility guidelines. WAS: Re: PDF's and Signatures
> Resent-Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 15:07:55 +0000
> Resent-From: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
> 
> Hi, all.
>
> This is a question I have received several times lately: What
> accessibility guidelines should our web teams and instructors follow when
> making PDFs available online? It seems like there is not a consensus with
> this group (and you are the group I look to for guidance on these issues).
> What guidelines have other organizations adopted? Any ideas or feedback
> are welcome.
>
> Rachel
>
> Dr. Rachel S. Thompson
> Director, Emerging Technology and Accessibility
> Center for Instructional Technology
> University of Alabama
> http://accessibility.ua.edu
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Duff Johnson <duff@duff-johnson.com>
> Date: Thursday, January 22, 2015 at 8:47 AM
> To: "w3c-wai-ig@w3.org" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
> Subject: Re: PDF's and Signatures
> Resent-From: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
> Resent-Date: Thursday, January 22, 2015 at 8:47 AM
>
>> I have to disagree slightly with Andy¹s claim ­ PDFs *are* covered-by
>> and included in WCAG
>
> To a degree, There are many facets of PDF that WCAG does not cover. For a
> complete understanding of PDF accessibility it is necessary to look to
> PDF/UA, the ISO standard for accessible PDF.
>
>> , and in fact there is a whole section of Success Techniques provided by
>> the W3C. Please see: http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20-TECHS/pdf.html
>
> While many of these are useful, some are simply wrong, misleading, or
> both. Additionally, these techniques represent only a modest fraction of
> what¹s necessary to guarantee an accessible PDF.
>
>> I think the issue(s) you will find problematic include how to render
>> that wet signature to non-visual users (it¹s not text, so OCR etc. will
>> struggle to dealinclude a graphic of a signature, you will of course need
>> to also provide appropriate alt text (I would likely counsel this:
>> alt=²[Signature: Mickey Mouse]²)
>
> One must distinguish between an ink signature (which is simply a graphics
> object requiring alt text to be accessible) and a digital signature, which
> is a property of the document itself, and should be exposed by AT
> accordingly just as is other document metadata.
>
>> I am personally unaware of the current state of accessibility and
>> digital signatures on PDFs, although my first guess is that it is likely
>> not perfect, buta robust and long-standing (if still imperfect) tool in
>> their shed. Perhaps Andrew might have a comment here (?)
>
> So far as I am aware the digital signature UIs in Adobe¹s tools are as
> accessible as the rest of Adobe Acrobat / Reader¹s UI. This has *nothing*
> to do, however, with an ³ink² signature, which is simply a pretty picture
> on the page, and like all other pictures, needs alt text to expose it to
> all forms of AT equally.
>
> Duff.
>
>
>
>
>