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1. Re: 508 compliance problems - read order and document structure
Philip Levy Feb 7, 2009 4:40 PM (in response to Frapster)Here are a couple of pointers:
Touch Up Reading Order within Acrobat lets you manuipulate the structure and can solve many such problems.
The Tags panel is a lower level interface that really lets you manipulate the structure but can be very tedious.
You didn't mention how the document was created or the tages were added, but you may need to go back there to get some problems fixed.
Finally, a company that deals with this kind of issue is Document Solutions; Duff Johnson has published on this subject. A web search for "pdf accessibility and structure" will get you lots of other references. -
2. Re: 508 compliance problems - read order and document structure
(Appligent_Document_Solutions) Feb 9, 2009 7:50 AM (in response to Frapster)Actually the company is Appligent Document Solutions
www.appligent.com -
3. Re: 508 compliance problems - read order and document structure
(Jane_Pellicciotto) Feb 13, 2009 12:11 PM (in response to Frapster)Frapster,
I'm having the same problems (on a Mac). I spent (wasted) about 5 hours yesterday trying to get a simple document to work, trying every method from tagging everything in InDesign first, to tagging once in Acrobat Pro, to clearing the page structure and starting over.
In short, what is supposed to work does not or works intermittently. In the end, I trashed Acrobat and reinstalled it (failing to get the Pro 8 patch to even work as well).
Anyway, what I found was that doing the same thing several times yielded different results, combining boxes that aren't in the same text thread to splitting up boxes that ARE in the same text thread.
If you get an answer, let me know!
I also failed to get a couple elements to ever be outlined with its numbered box.
A few things I'd like to know are:
Can you ADD a new tagged element to a page already tagged? And if not, why not?
Can you adjust the size/shape of the box surrounding elements? And if not, why not?
Why can't you delete a tagged-box element?
In the end, I think there was something wrong with Acrobat Pro. I couldn't for example add Alt text to one figure (I wasn't getting the Edit Alt text option in the Contextual menu...it was missing a bunch of items, not just greyed out), while I could add Alt text to another.
Sorry to steal your thread. I posted elsewhere about the same problem.
I can't believe we're the only people trying in vain to make 508-compliant PDFs. This is insane.
Adobe? Are you there listening? -
4. Re: 508 compliance problems - read order and document structure
(Jane_Pellicciotto) Feb 13, 2009 12:13 PM (in response to Frapster)For what it's worth, I just saw a reference here to a new 141-page manual about accessible PDFs. Enjoy!
http://indesignsecrets.com/creating-accessible-pdf-documents.php -
5. Re: 508 compliance problems - read order and document structure
Philip Levy Feb 14, 2009 2:20 PM (in response to Frapster)If you use the tags panel, you can do anything with structure, it just may not be easy.
If you are using the Touch up reading order tool, you should be able to restructure the structure on existing pages and so on. You can't change the graphic bounding boxes on actual content. Touch up reading order uses these bounds to decide, when you drag a rectangle, whether a given page element is included. This could be the root of your problems because if the bounding boxes are wacky, you will never be able to select them in a consistent, intuitive way. This is more likely to be a problem with InDesign content with lots of graphics than with, say, content created in a word processing system like MS Word.
If this is a document you can share, I can take a look. Email to first initial, last name at adobe.com.
If the document has lots of overlapping text and graphics, this will complicate matters but you may end up wanting to set the Actual Text attribute for the graphics to be the overlaid text. It starts to depend on your audience and what will work with screen readers or other assistive technology they are using.
Also, did you try Advanced > Accessibility > Add Tags To Document and let it try to do it autmoatically for you? -
6. Re: 508 compliance problems - read order and document structure
(Jane_Pellicciotto) Feb 18, 2009 10:12 AM (in response to Frapster)Philip,
You are so kind to offer your help.
It seems to be working...for now. I say for now because features that worked one minute didn't the next. I had to keep quitting Acrobat and relaunching. When I did, I could do what I couldn't do before.
Eventually, I reinstalled Acrobat and, interestingly, one bounding box encompassing 2 unrelated items was now split (as I wanted it.)
So, some of my problems seemed to be the software. I spent so much time that I didn't want to go back and start over to see if I would encounter the same issues as before.
But to answer your question, yes, I did try adding tags from within Acrobat. I also tried clearing the page structure and tried to draw bounding boxes around the content. It would only allow me to do one.
In the end, I went back to my InDesign layout file and created the tagged structure in there. But Acrobat did not honor the order of my items. It also combined or split things that I didn't want it to.
I also made sure that no text boxes overlapped anything (except where I had no choice). This was all before reinstalling the software though. It may be fine next time around. But if not, I might keep your contact info!
Are there tips for building your InDesign layout in the "right" way knowing you need to make an accessible PDF later?
Again, I apologize for my hijacking this guy's thread. I'm on a Mac, not Windows but that probably doesn't matter.

