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santhoshr29800103
Known Participant
March 9, 2023
Question

Accessibility reading order

  • March 9, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 690 views

Hi,

We are creating accessibility PDF through Acrobat Professional Xi and DC from PDF input. We have a below special requirements about reading order from our client for the following behaviour.

1. For cross-references to notes: Our customer wants to reads the Footnote citation, afterwards it should reads the corresponding Footnote text.   

2. For internal cross-references: Same as in above. Our customer wants to reads the internal cross reference such as year, then it should read the corresponding Author in the Reference section.

Also, internal cross references like, See Chapter2, See table 1.1, See figure 1.2 citations, We need to provide the Alt text like (Please see "Table 2.1" for your more reference)

3. For external cross-references and web links: The Alt text of the cross-reference should be read and then continue with the text of the paragraph.

Please let me know how could be automate this requirement in PDF using Adobe Acrobat Pro or is there any SDK available for this. Whether it is feasible to do in the SDK, please suggest.

 

Thanks,

Santhosh

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1 reply

Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
Legend
March 9, 2023

Hi @santhoshr29800103,

 

All of these requirements should be done in the native source file before the PDF is exported. With the latest versions of MS Word, PowerPoint, and Adobe InDesign, these are all tagged correctly when the PDF is made — IF the user made the footnotes and other cross-references correctly in the source file.  All source programs let you add Alt Text, too.

 

Once the PDF is made, it takes a lot of time to do these by hand in Acrobat. Plus, once in Acrobat, you can't designate the exact place in the body text for the destination anchor. Acrobat only creates "page views", not actual precise destinations.

 

Suggestions:

  • Upgrade your software. Acrobat XI is very out of date and doesn't create an accurate, PDF/UA-1 compliant accessible PDF. (PDF/UA-1 is the current international standard for accessible PDF.)
  • Return to the source file and create the hyperlinks there, as well as the Alt Text.
  • Export a new PDF from the source file and your PDF should be fine.

 

It's a lot faster to fix hyperlinks and reading order problems in the source file than in Acrobat!

 

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