JohannaH

I want to add some information here. PAC is (much) more strict than necessary. PAC2024 is even worse than PAC2021 when it comes to unnecessary failures and warnings that don't add anything to accessibility (WCAG) in my opinion. According to European law only WCAG rules should be applied to digital documents like PDF (clause 10 of the EN301549). PDF/UA is an official standard for PDF, but it's not required in the EN301549 (EU) or section 508 (US). Something like the "alternative description" on a Link-tag that PAC and PDF/UA require is not needed for WCAG or for accessibility. In fact, if screen readers would be able read that attribute it would probably cause extra problems. It would either replace the link text or add something to it. Better to have just a good link text. The "missing Bounding Box" attribute isn't part of PDF/UA (ISO 1.7) or WCAG as far as I know. I have found some comments on bounding boxes in general in that ISO. And I found also that extra attention must be paid to bounding boxes of tables and figures, but it wasn't clear to me if that extra attention is part of the PDF reader (like Acrobat) or the PDF creator. It's not in the Matterhorn either (list of failures in PDF/UA). Anyway, I couldn't find anything that would explain why PAC treats a missing Bounding Box attribute on a tag as a failure. The only failure I have encountered in my work as an auditor and remediator of PDFs is when a Figure tag points to the wrong part of the visible page. That can be fixed by putting the Bounding Box attribute on that tag and to make sure it points to the right section of the visible page. But that seems to be a rare problem. I do agree with what Layoutman said about the other problems like placement (block or inline) of objects and the many problems caused by InDesign with span tags and story tags. It would be wonderful if Affinity Publisher could do a better job.

I'm going to test this.

Whatever you use to create an EPUB, make sure it's accessible. Here are some resources: https://inclusivepublishing.org/toolbox/accessibility-guidelines/ https://www.w3.org/TR/epub-a11y-11/ https://www.w3.org/groups/wg/epub/publications

I checked the specs of this new version of Publisher. There are many nice features in there. What seems to be missing is the export of a tagged and accessible PDF (PDF/UA). Also I don't see how I could publish a digital book (EPUB3) with this app. I really hoped for some competition for Adobe InDesign which is capable of such output. Even Word produces such accessible PDFs and EPUB (with WordToEpub plugin). With the output of Publisher still focused on print only I don't have many reasons to use it. All digital documents for governmental institutions and, within a few years in the EU, for many commercial companies as well, need to be accessible. Besides, I don't want to exclude anyone from using my documents. I don't mind if I need to do some extra work with a tool like Adobe Acrobat for PDF or Sigil, Calibre, Ace by Daisy for EPUB3, but now I need Word, InDesign or some other app to create the document or book when I really would have liked to use Affinity Publisher.

@erssie, you could try the Pave website to change the PDF that Affinity produces into an accessible one. https://pave-pdf.org/?lang=en They offer a free online tool which might be the best option for you. Accessible PDF's is more than just the alt-texts. You'll need tags so a screenreader can easily read the text. If there are any headings, lists or tables in it the tags will show that to the screenreader, just like on a website. Even if your blind group members tell you it's fine without them it still might cause a problem when someone uses a different PDF reader. Pave should be able to fix that for you. To check the PDF when it's finished the also free PAC tool might help. It's what most people working in accessibility use to check PDFs. https://pdfua.foundation/en/pdf-accessibility-checker-pac/register This tool is simple to use, but make sure you read the manual to understand the outcome. Just ask here if you have questions and I'll try to help, because I don't think you'll need to fix everything that PAC shows as a fault. It's a bit too strict.

Hi @stokerg, good to hear you are working on this.

I found a free online tool (PAVE) to get your PDFs tagged. It's not perfect, although they really tried to create a good product. But at least you get most tags in your pdf without the extra costs of using Acrobat DC Pro. You could use the free PDF XChange Editor to adjust the tags. I'm still not sure if you can make all the changes with XChange like with Acrobat. It can't tag the whole document at once, but I think you can put them in one by one. Windows only. Check the whole thing with PAC. That's the best tool for automated checking and also for checking the reading order (=tag order), the texts, the use of the right semantic tags (screen reader preview button) and so on. It's for Windows only. These three tools won't solve the problem but at least it's something. https://pave-pdf.org https://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-editor https://www.access-for-all.ch/ch/pdf-werkstatt.html I hope Affinity Publisher will be able to create proper tags in one of the next versions. Without that the app will become useless for most users in the coming years because of changing laws. Within a few years most countries won't allow inaccessible PDFs on commercial websites anymore. Many governments (US, UK, EU) aren't allowed to use inaccessible PDFs already. I like the Affinity products, so please solve this problem, Serif!!

Thanks for starting this thread William! I really hope Serif will act on this and provide us with the right tools to make our digital products accessible. I love these apps and I want to use them for a very long time.

First of all, it's not my satisfaction, @William Overington. I started in this job in June last year and I'm still learning a lot about accessible documents. It's a complicated subject, but very interesting as well. I'm pleased to hear you want to get this right. As an author you can certainly do things. Some of which doesn't depend on the tags that are needed to make the PDF available to screenreaders and other tools for people with disabilities. On this website at W3 you'll find techniques to make PDF's accessible. There are 23 pages about PDF, the link takes you to the first of them. https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/pdf_notes.html Accessibility is also about the use of color, contrast of color, meaningful text, the title of the document (which you will see in the tab of the PDF reader), the right language, the use of headings in the right order (h1, h2, h3), reading order, and so on. If done right it'll help all your readers and it'll give all of them a better experience.

I've posted something in another thread (Tagged PDF support for accessibility in Feedback for Affinity Publisher) about this accessibility in PDF. Here is a copy of that text. I hope it helps you understand what this is about. "I totally agree with others on this subject. It's part of my job to check accessibility of PDFs. And most of them aren't accessible. But according to the law all content on a government (related) website in my country (part of the EU) and many other countries should be accessible. So that includes all PDFs on that website. Of course there is an exception for old documents. But new PDFs just have to be properly tagged so a screenreader is able to use it and read it to a blind person. And when that's the case, then it is usually also accessible to other tools used to help people to read or understand digital content. Within a bit more than a year the process of making all content on all websites in the EU will start and in June 2025 all company websites have to be accessible except the ones from very small companies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Accessibility_Act If Affinity doesn't solve this problem it will be impossible for designers to use this software as their products can not be published on websites anymore. We would be left with Adobe products just because they do have tags in PDFs, not because they are very good at it, they are not. I love all Affinity software, but I have to use other software to create accessible PDFs, like Adobe Acrobat, MS Word, Axes4 (Word Plugin and PDF QuickFix). I want to use Affinity!! Affinity team, please add tagging to creating PDFs! And please have a look at other things like a contrast checker, a checker of the the headings, and so on. Here you'll find some info: https://www.pdfa.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/TaggedPDFBestPracticeGuideSyntax.pdf https://www.pdfa.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/MatterhornProtocol_1-02.pdf https://www.axes4.com/resources.html https://www.access-for-all.ch/en/pdf-accessibility-checker.html https://www.access-for-all.ch/en/pdf-accessibility-checker/vip-pdf-reader.html"

I totally agree with you @PaoloT. It would be great to use an app like Affinity Publisher to create good layouts for webpages with a lot of content. I'd like to combine the knowledge about magazine design, book design and so on with web design. The output doesn't have to be a full webpage. Just a part of it with only the 'text' part of html would be fine. (paragraphs, headings, articles, images with alt-text, proper lists, etc) If you could create just a <main> part of a webpage with content or even just an <article> in html that would be a huge improvement. It would allow content creators to do their job and then merge it with the work of the frontend developer who created the page template. And html is accessible if it's built according to WCAG criteria. And for the content part that's not exactly rocket science.

I think there is some danger when it comes to the future of apps like Affinity Publisher. To survive as an app with which you can create PDFs or other documents that will be published online, that app needs to be capable to create accessible PDFs/documents. And that's not the case with Affinity Publisher (and many other software used to create PDFs). Many organisations are already required by law to only publish accessible content on their websites. And PDFs are web content, whether they are shown in the browser or just available using a link. Even if they are created only to be printed after downloading, they still need to be digitally accessible. In the coming years most company websites have to be made accessible for all people and not just the abled ones. Publisher apps like Affinity Publisher need to be capable of creating such accessible content or they'll become useless to any designer who's work ends up on a website.

I totally agree with others on this subject. It's part of my job to check accessibility of PDFs. And most of them aren't accessible. But according to the law all content on a government (related) website in my country (part of the EU) and many other countries should be accessible. So that includes all PDFs on that website. Of course there is an exception for old documents. But new PDFs just have to be properly tagged so a screenreader is able to use it and read it to a blind person. And when that's the case, then it is usually also accessible to other tools used to help people to read or understand digital content. Within a bit more than a year the process of making all content on all websites in the EU will start and in June 2025 all company websites have to be accessible except the ones from very small companies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Accessibility_Act If Affinity doesn't solve this problem it will be impossible for designers to use this software as their products can not be published on websites anymore. We would be left with Adobe products just because they do have tags in PDFs, not because they are very good at it, they are not. I love all Affinity software, but I have to use other software to create accessible PDFs, like Adobe Acrobat, MS Word, Axes4 (Word Plugin and PDF QuickFix). I want to use Affinity!! Affinity team, please add tagging to creating PDFs! And please have a look at other things like a contrast checker, a checker of the the headings, and so on. Here you'll find some info: https://www.pdfa.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/TaggedPDFBestPracticeGuideSyntax.pdf https://www.pdfa.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/MatterhornProtocol_1-02.pdf https://www.axes4.com/resources.html https://www.access-for-all.ch/en/pdf-accessibility-checker.html https://www.access-for-all.ch/en/pdf-accessibility-checker/vip-pdf-reader.html