Alt-text converting wrong from Word to PDF

[showalters]

We have a very long, very complex budget document we need to make 508 compliant. We are testing parts of the document to make sure we are doing things right in Word, so that we can limit accessibility issues when we convert it to a PDF. Currently I have a 12 page document with 21 charts in it. We labled each chart using the Edit Alt Text feature in word. They are labled like this: Line graph showing percentage change in Hillsborough County Taxable Property Values

When I use the Acrobat PDF maker to convert the document, then run the accessibility checker in Adobe, it has changed all of the alt text to somehting like this: Figure - P57#yIS1.

When I test the screen reader, and highlight the charts, it simply says "Blank".

So, even though we have entered descriptive alt text in Word, and even though some kind of alt text is showing on the charts (where it came from is a mystery), the screen reader still sees the chart as blank.

I tried saving as a PDF, instead of using the Adobe PDF maker, and when I do that, then it wants to see individual elements inside the chart as figures, and still does not convert the alt text we entered into the Word document.

I viewed the article for Alt-text not showing, and it was of no use. We have been told we should be able to add the alt-text in Word, it's even recommended to do it, but if it is not converting correctly or reading it correctly, what is the use?

I also noticed that even if I change the Alt Text Adobe, the screenreader doesn't read it and the tooltip (actual alt text) doesn't show up when you mouse over the chart.

I am including a link to Dropbox that contains both the Word Document and the converted PDF.

Alt Text Issues - dropbox with word and pdf 

[AnandSri · Accepted solution]

Hi All!

Thanks for your time and patience.

The fix is available with the latest update of Acrobat & Reader DC Continuous track: Adobe Acrobat and Reader - 21.007.2009x Optional update.

Please install the latest patch, and let us know if you experience any issues.

See this article for detailed information about this release, bug fixes and how to update the app: https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/adobe-acrobat-and-reader-21-007-2009x-optional-up...

Regards,
Anand Sri.

[Tanvi Rastogi]

Hi

Can you share which OS, Acrobat and Office version are you using?

Thanks

Tanvi

[showalters]

I have two different computers that this is happening on:

PC is Windows 7

Laptop Windows 10

Both use Adobe Acrobat Pro DC Version 2020.012.20043

Both use Office 365, Word Version 1808, but I didn't create the word document, although I would assume the person who did would probably have the same version of Office/Word since we both work for the County.

[Michele_Christian]

hello! did you ever receive an answer to this? It just started to happen to me a couple days ago and it is driving me up a wall! I tried uninstalling acrobat and reinstalling, and I still get alt text like "P3#yIS1" in the PDF when it is clearly in the alt text in word.

Any help would be much appreciated!!

[showalters]

Hi Michele-

Unfortunately, I did not hear anything more on this. I do know that Office and Adobe don't always play well, and neither seem to want to adress any issues that cause incompatibilities between them.

[Michele_Christian]

thank you for letting me know! I am going to try to file a ticket - this is happening to a few folks on my team as well. It seems to have started out of nowhere. I tried reinstalling both programs and nothing seems to help. I am not sure if the problem is with Word or Acrobat.

if it helps you, if you do a File>Save As, then choose PDF from the drop-down, it will convert with the alt text. However, you end up having to deal with some other tag issues with that algorithm, so, it is not a long term solution.

[Bevi Chagnon @ PubCom]

It might be the newest PDF Maker installed with the latest release in September. It has other issues as well.

[Michele_Christian]

Ah! Good to know. Do you know what other issues it is having?

I just got off the phone with Adobe - they said a new release is coming at the end of the month that should resolve the issue (hurray!) I hope it resolves these other issues you are having, Bevi.

Thank you all for your help! 

[Tanvi Rastogi]

Hi Michele

Thanks for your patience. We have added this in our bug database and will update you once this issue is addressed.

Hi Bevi

Can you please share what other issues you are observing with PDFMaker?

Thanks

Tanvi

[Michele_Christian]

Thanks so much!

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

Attached: Sample Word docx from Word 2016 and 365, using PDF Maker 21 (versions 21.7.112 and 21.7.123) and their respective PDFs.  Errors were the same in both versions.

The critical problems in PDF Maker 21 are:

1. Alt-text added in Word is lost during the conversion to PDF. Deletes what the author wrote and replaces it with gibberish.
   This is a major bug and makes PDF Maker totally unsuable for accessible documents.
   Shown in Acrobat: PDF Maker drops the Alt-text.
   
   
2. Borders on every table cell are tagged as <P>PathPathPath, one Path for each top, bottom, left, and right border in the <TR> table row. Should be artifacted.
   Shown in Acrobat, cell borders are not artifacted.
   
   
3. Underlines on hyperlinks should be artifacted, not left as "Path".
   Shown in Acrobat, hyperlink underlines must be artifacted.
4. Text Box borders and shadings are tagged as <Figure> and Path Path (seen in the Content panel).
    
   Shown in Acrobat's TAG panel.
   
   More problems shown in Acrobat's CONTENT pane.
   
   
5. Borders and shadings on paragraphs are tagged <Figure> with PathPathPath.
   
   Shown in Acrobat, decorative borders and shadings should be artifacted.
    
   More are shown in Acrobat's CONTENT pane.
6. There is no way to roll back to the previous version of Acrobat / PDF Maker.
   This is a serious shortcoming with Acrobat; everyone who must create accessible PDFs is SOL on these bugs.

Provide customers with a method to reinstall the previous version of Acrobat / PDF Maker. This is a major shortcoming with Acrobat.

[showalters]

Hey Bevi Chagnon-

Thanks for doing the research and submitting all of the issues for review. I hope it helps. Just as an FYI - the alt text issue replacing it with garbage text started for me before Sept. 

Thanks again for your hard work!

Sandi

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

Oh, heck.

Let's add another bug to the September update.

See this one re: dragging/dropping items in the tag and order panels. The coordination between your cursor and where it drops items is off.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/acrobat-pro-reading-order-box-and-tag-dragging-no...

Sad. There are so many bugs that Acrobat is not usable at this point.

[Tanvi Rastogi]

Thanks Bevi for reporting the issues. We have taken a note of all the bugs mentioned and will keep you posted on the progress.

Thanks

Tanvi

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

Thanks, Tanvi.

My firm is on the beta testing team, so please let the engineering team we're available to help.

I'm also on the ISO committees for PDF and PDF/UA standards and can provide details about those requirements.

[Tanvi Rastogi]

Hi,

Thank you for raising these accessibility issues. The post mentions about the following six bugs being introduced with the update that went live on September 14, 2021

1: Alt-Text from MS Word is not converting into the PDF. Instead, it is dropped and gibberish code is inserted 2: Every cell border on every table cell is being tagged as <P>PathPathPathPath 3: The underline on Hyperlinks should be tagged as artifacts 4: Borders and background shadings on Text Boxes are being tagged as a combination of <Figure>s and PathPathPath 5: Paragraph borders and shadings: same deal as #4 above.Per the PDF/UA-1 standard, they are visually decorative and should be artifacted 6: Dragging and dropping elements in both the Tag and Order panels is now broken.

Would like to mention that out of these, #1 and #6 were introduced with the Sep 14 update and remaining (#2, #3, #4 & #5) were present even in the Acrobat version prior to Sep 14 update. We apologize for the inconvenience caused by these issues.

Issue #1 and #6 were the regressions introduced with Sept 14th update and hence were fixed on priority with Sept 29th Update (Release Notes for September 29, 2021). With the latest version (22.001.20085) of Acrobat Pro DC released on March 7th (Release Notes for March 07, 2022), issues #2 and #3 have also been fixed. Issues #4 and #5 have been partially fixed so that PathPathPath tags won’t be part of the tag tree anymore. The remaining issue for #4 and # 5 (Borders and background shadings on Text Boxes / paragraphs are being tagged as <Figure>s) have already been added to our product backlog and those will be prioritized to be fixed in coming releases.

You can use the menu item Help → Check for Updates… to get the latest version of Acrobat Pro DC containing these fixes. Please try out the fixes and share the feedback as that will help us make our applications better from accessibility perspective.

Thanks & Regards

Tanvi Rastogi

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

@Tanvi Rastogi and

@AnandSri

and the Adobe Acrobat development team

and the Adobe Accessibility Team,

Thank you!

This update improves the lives of 1/3 of the world's population that must use assistive technology to read and use PDFs.

That's 2.5 billion people.

Oh ... plus all of the millions of workers, authors, and educators worldwide who are required to make accessible documents per their country's human rights laws that require all content to be accessible to everyone.

You've done a good thing for society.

Thank you!

[Matthew J. Mariani]

I recently began encountering an issue sporadically in which a path corresponding to the crop box of every page in certain pdfs appears in a P tag at the top of the tag tree in these pdfs created from Word.  So, 50-page pdf will have 50 P tags at the top of the tree, with each containing nothing but the path. Might this be related to the other recent issues described involving the undesirable inclusion of paths in the tag structure?

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

Yes, I think they're related because they involve a line not being artifacted correctly.

Yowza. What a mess!

Suggestion: add your experience and this particularly buggy bug to the UserVoice page. I'd type in all caps at the beginning of it so that it doesn't get lost in all the other comments. Something like "NEW RELATED BUG" might work.

Also, if you can, attach the PDF with the problem (or make a dummy file with the same problem). This really speeds up the engineers' ability to identify what the problem is and get it fixed.

The UserVoice post is here: https://acrobat.uservoice.com/forums/590923-acrobat-for-windows-and-mac/suggestions/44183082-accessi...

[Tanvi Rastogi]

Hi Matthew

Can you please share a sample Word file with which you are observing this issue? Was it working fine earlier?

Thanks

Tanvi

[Matthew J. Mariani]

Hi Tanvi,

The problem had never occurred until a couple of weeks ago. 

I shared a Word doc and a pdf on the UserVoice site as Bevi suggested. 

They are attached to comment 30 which begins "NEW RELATED BUG!!!"

https://acrobat.uservoice.com/forums/590923-acrobat-for-windows-and-mac/suggestions/44183082-accessi... 

[Tanvi Rastogi]

Thanks Matthew. We have taken a note of this issue. Did you recently update or upgrade your Office version as well?

Thanks

Tanvi

[Matthew J. Mariani]

Yes, we get monthly, automatic updates to Office 365.  I believe an update occurred recently.

Thanks for your efforts to look into this!

[Tanvi Rastogi]

Hi Mattew

This issue has been fixed with the latest version (22.001.20085) of Acrobat Pro DC released on March 7th (Release Notes for March 07, 2022). You can use the menu item Help → Check for Updates… to get the latest version of Acrobat Pro DC containing these fixes. Please try out the fixes and share the feedback as that will help us make our applications better from accessibility perspective.

Thanks

Tanvi

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

@showalters, @Michele_Christian 

Please VOTE and comment about this problem at UserVoice https://acrobat.uservoice.com/forums/590923-acrobat-for-windows-and-mac/suggestions/44183082-accessi...

Adobe works on the voting system: the more votes a bug or feature gets, the faster it moves up in the food chain. Posting in this forum doesn't give it much traction, but UserVoice does.

And please inform your colleagues and encourage them to vote as well.