Re: Reflow persona "What's New WCAG 2.1"

This is interesting. I wasn't thinking of PDF, just the SC 1.4.10, and the
EOWG doc referencing it. But are there really PDF readers that enable
reflow  dependably on a reasonably large set of documents?
I'm in. I test these things.
Thanks

On Fri, Sep 18, 2020 at 8:26 AM Duff Johnson <duff@duff-johnson.com> wrote:

> VIP’s reliance on tags means that is limited in situations where documents
> are not tagged.
>
>
> Definitely true. That said we are observing a trend towards automatically
> tagging all PDF at the point of creation. This is what Apple now does with
> their productivity suite (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) and it increasingly
> seems like a reasonable ask of all vendors. Just because it’s possible to
> make a lousy PDF isn’t an excuse to do so.
>
>    It also essentially means that it is creating a new view from the
> tagged content and you lose the other visual aspects on the page – so when
> tags are available and you are only reading content it’s good – although
> you lose some visual aspects such as headers & footers, lines, colors and
> other visual artifacts that may be helpful clues.
>
>
> As I understand it VIP PDF is targeting users / cases where simplified
> presentation is desirable. Other vendors (e.g. ZoomText) prefer to
> integrate Tagged PDF awareness into a “classical” view of PDF, e.g.,
> call-outs, highlighting, zoom magnification, etc… driven by tagged PDF.
>
> Also you lose any visual styles that may have been used that may not be
> marked up.  Most of the documents I encounter are not fully tagged or
> tagged with structures who semantics can be differentiated in VIP and thus
> it feels like I am seeing an alternative view of the document and wonder if
> there might be something I am missing.
>
>
> Certainly, it’s an alternative view of the page. It’s similar to the way
> in which HTML + ARIA without CSS can be said to be missing a lot of clues…
> but that’s the sort of “view” of a webpage that a screen-reader provides.
>
> Duff.
>
>
> *From:* Duff Johnson <duff@duff-johnson.com>
> *Sent:* Friday, September 18, 2020 10:05 AM
> *To:* Steve Green <steve.green@testpartners.co.uk>
> *Cc:* Gijs Veyfeyken <gijs@five-oaks.be>; Gregg Vanderheiden RTF <
> gregg@raisingthefloor.org>; Dick <wayneedick@gmail.com>; W3C WAI Interest
> Group <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
> *Subject:* Re: Reflow persona "What's New WCAG 2.1"
>
> *CAUTION:* This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not
> click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know
> the content is safe.
>
>
>
> VIP PDF is doing the same as Adobe Reader’s Reflow mode, but with a few
> important differences.
>
>
> Not so….
>
>    - Adobe’s “reflow mode” does not use Tagged PDF except in the most
>    minor of ways (within list structures, or so I’ve been told).
>    - VIP PDF uses Tagged PDF.
>
> Accordingly the applications cannot really be compared. The former uses
> content order, which is fundamentally arbitrary, the latter uses proper
> logical ordering and semantics.
>
>
> The consequence is that PDFs are much more readable in VIP PDF than in
> Adobe Reader’s Reflow mode.
>
>
> Yes!
>
> Duff Johnson
> Project Leader, ISO 14289 (PDF/UA)
> CEO, PDF Association
>
>
>