Re: Inaccessibility of EN301-549 (PDF format) Standards for screen reader users

Hi all,

ISO has similar (but different) problems with their PDF publishing. For example, in ISO standards (similar to ETSI, ISO also publishes in PDF) list items are tagged as paragraphs.

Under special arrangement with ISO, ISO 14289 is (still) the only ISO standard to conform to ISO 14289 (PDF/UA).

We (the PDF Association) are currently finalizing a report for ISO that assesses, at a high level, ISO products and processes for accessibility consistent with ISO’s Guide 71.

https://www.iso.org/standard/57385.html

I encourage you to review Guide 71 (which, unlike most ISO publications, is freely available) for similar purposes…. and let ISO (as well as IEC) know of your findings.

Duff Johnson

ISO 32000 & ISO 14289, Project Leader
PDF Association, CEO

https://www.pdfa.org

p  +1.617 283 4226
e  duff.johnson@pdfa.org
l  http://www.linkedin.com/in/duffjohnson/


> On Jul 3, 2022, at 14:54, Sailesh Panchang <spanchang02@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hello Listers,
> I had highlighted the subject issue in 2019  but the issues still persist. So I followed up again just a few weeks ago by writing to ETSI.
> For instance at present the data tables  in Annex A (A.1 and A.2) that start on page 90 of version 3.2.1 (March 2021) do not convey relationship between header cells and data cells.
> The tables are not tagged to convey the column-span property. It appears the PDF is created by saving Word files as PDF and no further tagging is done.
> So it is almost impossible to comprehend the table structure using a screen reader.
> This problem would also be caught by testing with AT (if done) before the PDF is published publicly.
> So it is important for users who depend on AT / accessibility features to write to ESPsupport@etsi.org, convey their experience and urge ETSI to make necessary changes.
> It is not good that the standards  themselves pose accessibility problems.
> Thanks,
> Sailesh
>