Someone wants to attach Word documents to a PDF and have that be accessible. I can't find any guidance that says either way, but I can't imagine doing this would be accessible because non-sighted users wouldn't know the attachments are there. I've seen on this forum that you can create an internal link in a PDF to an attached PDF, but you can't do that for non-PDFs. Does anyone know of guidance that says yes/no to this seemingly poor practice? Or any ideas at all?
Thanks, JR. However, this article doesn't seem to address whether or not attaching documents to a PDF is accessible to non-sighted users. That's my concern. I know how to attach things to a PDF but, once I make the attachments, AT doesn't announce they are there. It seems like attaching documents is poor practice for accessibility unless (1) there's a way you can create a link in the PDF that carries the attachments to the attached documents (regardless of format) or (2) the document itself reads "This PDF has attachments: please access side panel to download." Clients who must conform to federal accessibility mandates don't seem to want to do any of this and slap attachments on whatever they want because I can't produce some guideline from an external authority. That's what I was hoping to find: Guidelines from an accessibility authority that say "Attachments are accessible/not accessible/accessible if you do the following...".
There's no one clear answer for this. Accessibility is a wide and complex subject, which depends on various standards, technologies and even laws. A certain feature thing might be accessible for one person, but not to another. Or it might be accessible in some circumstances (for example, when the file is viewed on a regular PC using specific software), but not in other situations (for example, when viewed on a mobile device).
So we can't just say "yeah, it's accessible", or "no, it's not accessible".
Before finding an answer to your question, you need to define it better.
If it is possible to access the attachment by opening the side panel using the keyboard only and the attached document is accessible itself, then the basic accessibility is there. However, I agree with you that if the document content doesn't tell the user there is an attachment that is a serious accessibility problem. The author is not providing sufficient information or instruction to the reader to enable them to access the file. In fact, even sighted users may not be aware of the attachment if they don't know to look for it. When I open a file in Acrobat Reader, for example, the attachments pane does not open by default even if there is an attachment. So unless the author lets the reader know there is an attachment I would say it is not fully accessible on that basis.
I believe (if I understood them correctly) that they're asking about the accessibility of placing a document as an attachment in general, not about whether it modifies the accessibility status of the attached file.
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