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Question

Accessibility issues when Adobe FrameMaker files are saved to PDF

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
January 7, 2025
6 replies
9353 views

I work for a large organization. We have been using Adobe FrameMaker to create numerous user guides (PDFs) for many years. These user guides need to be frequently updated. All user guides must be accessibility compliant. The PDFs that we create using Adobe FrameMaker are very large (hundreds of pages for each PDF). After creating a PDF, we run an accessibility check using Adobe Acrobat Pro. Some of the accessibility issues that are listed in the check require an enormous amount of time to manually resolve in the PDF. And every time we update a PDF, we must “start from scratch” to resolve the accessibility issues again.

It seems that some of these issues should not be happening when the Adobe FrameMaker files are saved to PDF. We are currently using the Adobe FrameMaker 2022 version. If we are unable to resolve these issues, we might need to start considering other software options.

Note: We have also tried different settings file options to publish the Adobe FrameMaker files to PDF. However, we still get the same issues in the accessibility check.

Here are two examples of accessibility issues:

Tagged content – Failed:

This issue is due to text on headers and footers on the “Master Pages.” This content is not real content (and we don’t want headers and footers to be read by a screen reader). The text from the “Master Pages” should be “pagination artifacts.” There is nothing in the Adobe FrameMaker PDF Setup to designate headers and footers on the “Master Pages” as pagination artifacts. To resolve this, we currently have to open the “Contents Panel” in the PDF and manually change the text for every header and footer to a pagination artifact. This task must be repeated for every page in the PDF.

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Lbl and LBody – Failed:

This error occurs for every “heading” that has “auto-generated” text or numbering (format designated under the Paragraph Designer > Numbering). These paragraph tags are meant to be headings and are designated as headings (first level, second level, and third level) in the Adobe FrameMaker PDF Setup (under the “Tags” tab). These are not meant to be lists. To resolve this issue, we currently have to open the “Tags Panel” and manually change the “auto-generated” portion of the heading (text or numbering) that got labeled with a <Lbl> tag in the PDF to a <Span> tag. Because our PDFs are so large, we have to repeat this task for hundreds of headings throughout the PDF every time we update the PDF.

Example formatting for auto-generated text for headings (under Paragraph Designer > Numbering)

Heading1 (used for chapter title headings): C:Chapter <$chapnum>: Example -
Heading2 (used for section headings): H:\t<$chapnum>.<n+>\t
Heading3 (used for subsection headings): H:\t<$chapnum>.<n>.<n+>\t

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If helpful, see attached "Chapter 2" example PDF (with unedited accessibility issues) and PDF accessibility remediation document with notes. I also tried to attach the example FrameMaker file, which was used to create the example PDF, but it would not let me "drag and drop" a file with a "fm" FrameMaker extension (file name: Chapter 2 Example file.fm) into the "drag and drop" box.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

-Andrea

Chapter2_Example_file.pdf

PDF_accessibility_remediation_ExampleFile.docx

davidcfrye5910298

Inspiring

I just wanted to let you know that you're not alone. I have had a host of issues with accessibility in both PDFs and HTML generated out of Frame. In particular, that issue you mention of tags getting wrapped in <p> tags has proved one of the most frustrating. We too are giving a lot of thought to switching software. The tag mapping just doesn't work as expected

and isn't consistent in any way that makes sense. Short of scripting solutions, I'm basically out of ideas. Luckily, AI is here. That's its own expense and learning curve, but it does mean solutions are in reach of the masses.

S

Steven Manson

Participant

Adding a big 'ditto' to this. FM seems incapable of producing clean and accessible PDFs despite saying it can. I am experiencing the same issues raised by others and have spent weeks experimenting to try to find a solution. This is going to matter a lot more as there are new (in the US) federal guidelines around producing accessible output. Fully tagged and accessible PDF barely make the cut as it is, they have to be nearly perfect to pass muster. Very frustrating. I will keep looking around on the forums!

Matt-Tech Comm Tools

Community Expert

Here's a video overview I created that includes options to get you closer to 508 compatibility

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5-Nl7sMvoE

-Matt Sullivan, FrameMaker Course Creator, Author, Trainer, Consultant

A

Andrea31732358f62jAuthor

Participating Frequently

I have watched the video “Generate PDF-A and PDF-X compliant PDFs” in the past and again recently.

However - We have tried testing different settings file options to publish the Adobe FrameMaker files to PDF (e.g., Standard, PDFA3b). But we still get the same issues in the accessibility check.

Again, here are two examples of accessibility issues (regardless of the settings file option selected):

Tagged content – Failed:

This issue is due to text on headers and footers on the “Master Pages.” This content is not real content (and we don’t want headers and footers to be read by a screen reader). The text from the “Master Pages” should be “pagination artifacts.” There is nothing in the Adobe FrameMaker PDF Setup to designate headers and footers on the “Master Pages” as pagination artifacts. To resolve this, we currently have to open the “Contents Panel” in the PDF and manually change the text for every header and footer to a pagination artifact. This task must be repeated for every page in the PDF.

Lbl and LBody – Failed

This error occurs for every “heading” that has “auto-generated” text or numbering (format designated under the Paragraph Designer > Numbering). These paragraph tags are meant to be headings and are designated as headings (first level, second level, and third level) in the Adobe FrameMaker PDF Setup (under the “Tags” tab). These are not meant to be lists. To resolve this issue, we currently have to open the “Tags Panel” and manually change the “auto-generated” portion of the heading (text or numbering) that got labeled with a <Lbl> tag in the PDF to a <Span> tag. Because our PDFs are so large, we have to repeat this task for hundreds of headings throughout the PDF every time we update the PDF.

QUESTIONS:

Could a customized settings file eliminate these types of issues?

If yes, could someone from the Adobe Community or Adobe Assist be able to provide a demo showing us how to customize a settings file (or provide an example video)?

Thanks!

Matt-Tech Comm Tools

Community Expert

Along with the PDF job options file, there are specific tagging options under Format > Document > PDF Setup

Have you used this to map specific Fm styles to PDF tags?

-Matt Sullivan, FrameMaker Course Creator, Author, Trainer, Consultant

F

FrameMaker-dk

Community Expert

Might it be possible to have a sample of one of your documents to do some experimentation on? Merely a page or so, but something with the same level of formatting and the same stylesheet? It is not possible to upload fm documents to the forum, but you can mail me directly at info@framemaker.dk. Your question is a complex and interesting one, and I would like to understand it better.

Bjørn Smalbro - FrameMaker.dk

A

Andrea31732358f62jAuthor

Participating Frequently

For this issue, I sent a request to Adobe FrameMaker "Assisted Support" on 1/10/2025 asking for help. However, so far, I have not received any replies (case sent to: tcssup@adobe.com).

Jeff_Coatsworth

Community Expert

I'd reach out to the FM folks - see https://helpx.adobe.com/contact/enterprise-support.other.html#framemaker for your Adobe Support options. I'd recommend using the tcssup@adobe.com e-mail address as it reaches a team dedicated to Technical Communication Suite products including FrameMaker.

A

Andrea31732358f62jAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thank you. I will try and contact the FM technical support using the link you provided.

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FYI - As a test, I tried using the “Tags (Distiller)” option under the PDF Setup and I checked the box for “Use Acrobat Distiller for PDF generation” option under the PDF Publish Settings. However, I am not enthusiastic about using the distiller options. If the “Tags (Distiller)” option were to be used for the PDF Setup, the only tags that would display in the PDF Tags Panel would be those that were specifically added to the “Include Paragraphs” dialog box under the “Tags (Distiller)” PDF Setup (if a paragraph tag is not included, it becomes an artifact under the PDF Contents Panel; and then you also need to specify the “logical structure” by adding an indent[s] to a particular tag). We have a very large number of paragraph tags in our files (this would be a challenge). Also, and perhaps more important, after I generated a test PDF using these distiller options, the tables and secondary headings (Heading2, Heading3) tags in the PDF Tags Panel got nested under <P> tags, which makes them harder to locate in the PDF Tags Panel.

F

FrameMaker-dk

Community Expert

I did try running the sample file forwards and backwards with different setups. I was hoping it might be feasible to control all settings from the FrameMaker source file, but I have lost faith in that. I believe one will have to either think differently about what is needed for navigational purposes and whether a modified template with - for instance - page and chapter numbers as conditional might help. Work arounds, in short!

Another option which might be worth investigating is having a script developed for the PDF file in Acrobat. Acrobat can be scripted, but to what extent, I am not sure.

Bjørn Smalbro - FrameMaker.dk

F

FrameMaker-dk

Community Expert

Regarding "Lbl and LBody – Failed:". Are you using this function for tags setup. Print->PDF Setup->Tags? ...

Bjørn Smalbro - FrameMaker.dk

A

Andrea31732358f62jAuthor

Participating Frequently

For the PDF Setup, I use the "Tags" option. I do not use the "Tags (Distiller)" option, which is supposedly not the preferred method for acessible-compliant documents. When I publish to PDF, I have tried different preset options. For this example, I used the "Standard" preset setting. Becuase our PDFs are so large, the "Standard" preset setting option helps us to keep the PDF size smaller. Please see attached photos.

W

Winfried Reng

Community Expert

I just checked a few of my files. And I also checked, when I create the PDF via the FrameMaker PDF engine or with Distiller (Use Acrobat Distiller ...) or print to a PostScript file and distill to PDF.

With the FrameMaker PDF engine I get your issues (and also a few others):

Tagged content – Failed:

Lbl and LBody – Failed:

When I create the PDF via Distiller, I do not get these issues, very good!

I only got these issues:

Tagged annotations (marks all my cross-references and hypertext in TOC and index)

Tab order (marks the content of each page)

I did not use the special PDF presets for Accessibility. Possibly these would provide even better results.

W

Winfried Reng

Community Expert

Hi Andrea,

Hm. Difficult. I do not have this requirement yet and therefore do not know, how to tackle your issues.

How do you create your PDFs? With the Distiller (see the option "Use Acrobat Distiller ..." in the Publish settings)? Or with the FrameMaker PDF engine?

When Distiller, did you test all presets? (You could also create a PostScript file and then distill this with different Distiller presets. Possibly faster to test.)

Best regards, Winfried

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