Dezinah

Accessible files can be accessed, read, processed, and used by those with disabilities who must use assistive technologies with their computers: they include screen readers, magnification software, dyslexia software, and mobility software (when someone can't operate a keyboard or mouse).
Accessible ICT (Information Communications Technology, such as PDFs, EPUB, digital media, websites) is required by the governments of most industrialized countries; it is usually part of the country's civil rights and equal access to education legislation, such as the ADA in the US. See this world map for details: https://www.3playmedia.com/blog/countries-that-have-adopted-wcag-standards-map/  But note that many more countries are in the process of formally adopting the standards and are already producing accessible files.
The United Nations and other non-partisan international organizations promote accessibility because nearly 1/3 of the world's population has a disability or impairment that prevents them from reading and using digital content. See https://www.karlencommunications.com/DisabilityRights.html
Accessibility means any type of file that is available digitally, whether via a website or other type of media, must meet the accessibility requirements spelled out by the PDF/UA-1 standards (for PDFs), WCAG 2.1 (for websites), and EPUB 3 (for EPUBs).  From Affinity Publisher, it would apply to PDFs and EPUBs made from Publisher layouts.
The standards are international: individual countries pass the legislation that requires the various accessibility standards to ensure that no citizen is prevented from accessing and reading digital information, such as textbooks for school, financial and legal paperwork, user manuals, employment/school/work applications, news, libraries/research ... just about everything we all read and/or download from the web.
Graphic designers create the bulk of this type of content, and right now, only MS Word, Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress have tools to export tagged, accessible PDFs.
There's an opportunity for Affinity to add accessibility tools to Publisher and create a solid competitor to InDesign. I can't begin to count the number of designers who work for governments (national and local), academia (preschool through post-secondary), or for major industries that are required to have accessible ICT.  They're stuck with InDesign because it's the only viable tool right now.
They'd jump ship in a heartbeat if Affinity gave them accessibility tools in Publisher.
—Bevi Chagnon / PubCom.com
Trainer, consultant, and book author for accessible documents.
US Delegate to the ISO committee for the PDF/UA standards.
Advisor and beta tester to software companies for building accessibility tools.

The tags and reading order would be created when the PDF is exported from the source design/layout program.
We "assign" tags in the layout, but they don't actually get created until the PDF is being exported.
Affinity already knows how to make a PDF because any software that creates any kind of PDF must follow the international standards for PDFs called ISO 32000. Any PDF must be made to the standard so that the PDF file can be read or viewed by any brand of PDF reader. This is very common in the manufacturing and software world. It's crucial in printing as we see with out PDF/X requirements (another international standard from the ISO for press-quality PDFs).
All Affinity has to do now is add the standards for PDF/UA ISO 14329, an extended version of the PDF standards that includes the requirements for accessibility in a PDF, such as tags and reading orders.
They've already built their programming engine to create general PDFs, now add in the accessibility requirements. I won't be rude and say it's easy for Affinity to do that, but it's not that complicated, either. The hardest part is making the fricking PDF itself to begin with, and they've already done that.
@sheriffderek, since you already know HTML and CSS, let me make a comparison that could help put this into perspective.
HTML requires that standard tags be used to encase all parts of the content, like <p>, <h1>, <h2>, etc.  You can't publish a webpage without having your content tagged.
Desktop publishing, on the other hand, has traditionally NOT required this type of tagging, unless you were specifically doing XML, SGML, or tagged content publishing. Tags and accessibility are relatively new to the graphic design industry.
In websites, CSS is what's used to style the content, instructing a browser to take all <p> content and use Source Sans font, for example. Or take all <h1> content and color it RBG ## ## ##. Web developers design with CSS.
CSS is directly like what we do now with our Affinity Publisher paragraph and character styles: we define how a particular portion of text will look, its font, color, alignment, size, etc. — just like CSS does in HTML.
At this point, Publisher doesn't let us designate what tag to put on each type of text. Styles are the most convenient way to do this, as Adobe InDesign has shown for the past decade. As a graphic designer, I need to make a style for my subheadings that specifies Roboto Bold, 24 pt on 26 pt leading, left aligned, no hyphenation — and also tag it as <h2> when the PDF is exported.
We don't put tags inside the desktop publishing layout— no accessibility tags are in the layout. Instead, we give the instructions to add the tags when the PDF is exported. (Note, this is NOT XML, which does tag the content in the layout. PDF Accessibility tags are not XML tags.)
So Affinity needs to expand their current PDF-export utility to include accessibility tags and reading order, and then give us a way to assign the tags and control the reading order in our layouts.
And as a bonus, they could port that utility over to Designer, giving us the ability to make accessible info graphics and small projects in that program, too.
If Affinity did that, eat your heart out Adobe!  😁  Illustrator doesn't have a shred of accessibility in it.
Imagine if we designers had both layout and graphics programs that could make accessible PDFs.
Wow. Game changer for the industry.
 
—Bevi Chagnon / PubCom.com
Designer | Teacher | Author | Expert for Accessible Documents
Learn about accessibility at our free blog, www.PubCom.com/blog
US Delegate to the ISO committee for the PDF/UA standards.
Advisor and beta tester to software companies for building accessibility tools.
 

The tags and reading order would be created when the PDF is exported from the source design/layout program.
We "assign" tags in the layout, but they don't actually get created until the PDF is being exported.
Affinity already knows how to make a PDF because any software that creates any kind of PDF must follow the international standards for PDFs called ISO 32000. Any PDF must be made to the standard so that the PDF file can be read or viewed by any brand of PDF reader. This is very common in the manufacturing and software world. It's crucial in printing as we see with out PDF/X requirements (another international standard from the ISO for press-quality PDFs).
All Affinity has to do now is add the standards for PDF/UA ISO 14329, an extended version of the PDF standards that includes the requirements for accessibility in a PDF, such as tags and reading orders.
They've already built their programming engine to create general PDFs, now add in the accessibility requirements. I won't be rude and say it's easy for Affinity to do that, but it's not that complicated, either. The hardest part is making the fricking PDF itself to begin with, and they've already done that.
@sheriffderek, since you already know HTML and CSS, let me make a comparison that could help put this into perspective.
HTML requires that standard tags be used to encase all parts of the content, like <p>, <h1>, <h2>, etc.  You can't publish a webpage without having your content tagged.
Desktop publishing, on the other hand, has traditionally NOT required this type of tagging, unless you were specifically doing XML, SGML, or tagged content publishing. Tags and accessibility are relatively new to the graphic design industry.
In websites, CSS is what's used to style the content, instructing a browser to take all <p> content and use Source Sans font, for example. Or take all <h1> content and color it RBG ## ## ##. Web developers design with CSS.
CSS is directly like what we do now with our Affinity Publisher paragraph and character styles: we define how a particular portion of text will look, its font, color, alignment, size, etc. — just like CSS does in HTML.
At this point, Publisher doesn't let us designate what tag to put on each type of text. Styles are the most convenient way to do this, as Adobe InDesign has shown for the past decade. As a graphic designer, I need to make a style for my subheadings that specifies Roboto Bold, 24 pt on 26 pt leading, left aligned, no hyphenation — and also tag it as <h2> when the PDF is exported.
We don't put tags inside the desktop publishing layout— no accessibility tags are in the layout. Instead, we give the instructions to add the tags when the PDF is exported. (Note, this is NOT XML, which does tag the content in the layout. PDF Accessibility tags are not XML tags.)
So Affinity needs to expand their current PDF-export utility to include accessibility tags and reading order, and then give us a way to assign the tags and control the reading order in our layouts.
And as a bonus, they could port that utility over to Designer, giving us the ability to make accessible info graphics and small projects in that program, too.
If Affinity did that, eat your heart out Adobe!  😁  Illustrator doesn't have a shred of accessibility in it.
Imagine if we designers had both layout and graphics programs that could make accessible PDFs.
Wow. Game changer for the industry.
 
—Bevi Chagnon / PubCom.com
Designer | Teacher | Author | Expert for Accessible Documents
Learn about accessibility at our free blog, www.PubCom.com/blog
US Delegate to the ISO committee for the PDF/UA standards.
Advisor and beta tester to software companies for building accessibility tools.
 

The tags and reading order would be created when the PDF is exported from the source design/layout program.
We "assign" tags in the layout, but they don't actually get created until the PDF is being exported.
Affinity already knows how to make a PDF because any software that creates any kind of PDF must follow the international standards for PDFs called ISO 32000. Any PDF must be made to the standard so that the PDF file can be read or viewed by any brand of PDF reader. This is very common in the manufacturing and software world. It's crucial in printing as we see with out PDF/X requirements (another international standard from the ISO for press-quality PDFs).
All Affinity has to do now is add the standards for PDF/UA ISO 14329, an extended version of the PDF standards that includes the requirements for accessibility in a PDF, such as tags and reading orders.
They've already built their programming engine to create general PDFs, now add in the accessibility requirements. I won't be rude and say it's easy for Affinity to do that, but it's not that complicated, either. The hardest part is making the fricking PDF itself to begin with, and they've already done that.
@sheriffderek, since you already know HTML and CSS, let me make a comparison that could help put this into perspective.
HTML requires that standard tags be used to encase all parts of the content, like <p>, <h1>, <h2>, etc.  You can't publish a webpage without having your content tagged.
Desktop publishing, on the other hand, has traditionally NOT required this type of tagging, unless you were specifically doing XML, SGML, or tagged content publishing. Tags and accessibility are relatively new to the graphic design industry.
In websites, CSS is what's used to style the content, instructing a browser to take all <p> content and use Source Sans font, for example. Or take all <h1> content and color it RBG ## ## ##. Web developers design with CSS.
CSS is directly like what we do now with our Affinity Publisher paragraph and character styles: we define how a particular portion of text will look, its font, color, alignment, size, etc. — just like CSS does in HTML.
At this point, Publisher doesn't let us designate what tag to put on each type of text. Styles are the most convenient way to do this, as Adobe InDesign has shown for the past decade. As a graphic designer, I need to make a style for my subheadings that specifies Roboto Bold, 24 pt on 26 pt leading, left aligned, no hyphenation — and also tag it as <h2> when the PDF is exported.
We don't put tags inside the desktop publishing layout— no accessibility tags are in the layout. Instead, we give the instructions to add the tags when the PDF is exported. (Note, this is NOT XML, which does tag the content in the layout. PDF Accessibility tags are not XML tags.)
So Affinity needs to expand their current PDF-export utility to include accessibility tags and reading order, and then give us a way to assign the tags and control the reading order in our layouts.
And as a bonus, they could port that utility over to Designer, giving us the ability to make accessible info graphics and small projects in that program, too.
If Affinity did that, eat your heart out Adobe!  😁  Illustrator doesn't have a shred of accessibility in it.
Imagine if we designers had both layout and graphics programs that could make accessible PDFs.
Wow. Game changer for the industry.
 
—Bevi Chagnon / PubCom.com
Designer | Teacher | Author | Expert for Accessible Documents
Learn about accessibility at our free blog, www.PubCom.com/blog
US Delegate to the ISO committee for the PDF/UA standards.
Advisor and beta tester to software companies for building accessibility tools.
 

The tags and reading order would be created when the PDF is exported from the source design/layout program.
We "assign" tags in the layout, but they don't actually get created until the PDF is being exported.
Affinity already knows how to make a PDF because any software that creates any kind of PDF must follow the international standards for PDFs called ISO 32000. Any PDF must be made to the standard so that the PDF file can be read or viewed by any brand of PDF reader. This is very common in the manufacturing and software world. It's crucial in printing as we see with out PDF/X requirements (another international standard from the ISO for press-quality PDFs).
All Affinity has to do now is add the standards for PDF/UA ISO 14329, an extended version of the PDF standards that includes the requirements for accessibility in a PDF, such as tags and reading orders.
They've already built their programming engine to create general PDFs, now add in the accessibility requirements. I won't be rude and say it's easy for Affinity to do that, but it's not that complicated, either. The hardest part is making the fricking PDF itself to begin with, and they've already done that.
@sheriffderek, since you already know HTML and CSS, let me make a comparison that could help put this into perspective.
HTML requires that standard tags be used to encase all parts of the content, like <p>, <h1>, <h2>, etc.  You can't publish a webpage without having your content tagged.
Desktop publishing, on the other hand, has traditionally NOT required this type of tagging, unless you were specifically doing XML, SGML, or tagged content publishing. Tags and accessibility are relatively new to the graphic design industry.
In websites, CSS is what's used to style the content, instructing a browser to take all <p> content and use Source Sans font, for example. Or take all <h1> content and color it RBG ## ## ##. Web developers design with CSS.
CSS is directly like what we do now with our Affinity Publisher paragraph and character styles: we define how a particular portion of text will look, its font, color, alignment, size, etc. — just like CSS does in HTML.
At this point, Publisher doesn't let us designate what tag to put on each type of text. Styles are the most convenient way to do this, as Adobe InDesign has shown for the past decade. As a graphic designer, I need to make a style for my subheadings that specifies Roboto Bold, 24 pt on 26 pt leading, left aligned, no hyphenation — and also tag it as <h2> when the PDF is exported.
We don't put tags inside the desktop publishing layout— no accessibility tags are in the layout. Instead, we give the instructions to add the tags when the PDF is exported. (Note, this is NOT XML, which does tag the content in the layout. PDF Accessibility tags are not XML tags.)
So Affinity needs to expand their current PDF-export utility to include accessibility tags and reading order, and then give us a way to assign the tags and control the reading order in our layouts.
And as a bonus, they could port that utility over to Designer, giving us the ability to make accessible info graphics and small projects in that program, too.
If Affinity did that, eat your heart out Adobe!  😁  Illustrator doesn't have a shred of accessibility in it.
Imagine if we designers had both layout and graphics programs that could make accessible PDFs.
Wow. Game changer for the industry.
 
—Bevi Chagnon / PubCom.com
Designer | Teacher | Author | Expert for Accessible Documents
Learn about accessibility at our free blog, www.PubCom.com/blog
US Delegate to the ISO committee for the PDF/UA standards.
Advisor and beta tester to software companies for building accessibility tools.
 

Accessible files can be accessed, read, processed, and used by those with disabilities who must use assistive technologies with their computers: they include screen readers, magnification software, dyslexia software, and mobility software (when someone can't operate a keyboard or mouse).
Accessible ICT (Information Communications Technology, such as PDFs, EPUB, digital media, websites) is required by the governments of most industrialized countries; it is usually part of the country's civil rights and equal access to education legislation, such as the ADA in the US. See this world map for details: https://www.3playmedia.com/blog/countries-that-have-adopted-wcag-standards-map/  But note that many more countries are in the process of formally adopting the standards and are already producing accessible files.
The United Nations and other non-partisan international organizations promote accessibility because nearly 1/3 of the world's population has a disability or impairment that prevents them from reading and using digital content. See https://www.karlencommunications.com/DisabilityRights.html
Accessibility means any type of file that is available digitally, whether via a website or other type of media, must meet the accessibility requirements spelled out by the PDF/UA-1 standards (for PDFs), WCAG 2.1 (for websites), and EPUB 3 (for EPUBs).  From Affinity Publisher, it would apply to PDFs and EPUBs made from Publisher layouts.
The standards are international: individual countries pass the legislation that requires the various accessibility standards to ensure that no citizen is prevented from accessing and reading digital information, such as textbooks for school, financial and legal paperwork, user manuals, employment/school/work applications, news, libraries/research ... just about everything we all read and/or download from the web.
Graphic designers create the bulk of this type of content, and right now, only MS Word, Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress have tools to export tagged, accessible PDFs.
There's an opportunity for Affinity to add accessibility tools to Publisher and create a solid competitor to InDesign. I can't begin to count the number of designers who work for governments (national and local), academia (preschool through post-secondary), or for major industries that are required to have accessible ICT.  They're stuck with InDesign because it's the only viable tool right now.
They'd jump ship in a heartbeat if Affinity gave them accessibility tools in Publisher.
—Bevi Chagnon / PubCom.com
Trainer, consultant, and book author for accessible documents.
US Delegate to the ISO committee for the PDF/UA standards.
Advisor and beta tester to software companies for building accessibility tools.

Accessible files can be accessed, read, processed, and used by those with disabilities who must use assistive technologies with their computers: they include screen readers, magnification software, dyslexia software, and mobility software (when someone can't operate a keyboard or mouse).
Accessible ICT (Information Communications Technology, such as PDFs, EPUB, digital media, websites) is required by the governments of most industrialized countries; it is usually part of the country's civil rights and equal access to education legislation, such as the ADA in the US. See this world map for details: https://www.3playmedia.com/blog/countries-that-have-adopted-wcag-standards-map/  But note that many more countries are in the process of formally adopting the standards and are already producing accessible files.
The United Nations and other non-partisan international organizations promote accessibility because nearly 1/3 of the world's population has a disability or impairment that prevents them from reading and using digital content. See https://www.karlencommunications.com/DisabilityRights.html
Accessibility means any type of file that is available digitally, whether via a website or other type of media, must meet the accessibility requirements spelled out by the PDF/UA-1 standards (for PDFs), WCAG 2.1 (for websites), and EPUB 3 (for EPUBs).  From Affinity Publisher, it would apply to PDFs and EPUBs made from Publisher layouts.
The standards are international: individual countries pass the legislation that requires the various accessibility standards to ensure that no citizen is prevented from accessing and reading digital information, such as textbooks for school, financial and legal paperwork, user manuals, employment/school/work applications, news, libraries/research ... just about everything we all read and/or download from the web.
Graphic designers create the bulk of this type of content, and right now, only MS Word, Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress have tools to export tagged, accessible PDFs.
There's an opportunity for Affinity to add accessibility tools to Publisher and create a solid competitor to InDesign. I can't begin to count the number of designers who work for governments (national and local), academia (preschool through post-secondary), or for major industries that are required to have accessible ICT.  They're stuck with InDesign because it's the only viable tool right now.
They'd jump ship in a heartbeat if Affinity gave them accessibility tools in Publisher.
—Bevi Chagnon / PubCom.com
Trainer, consultant, and book author for accessible documents.
US Delegate to the ISO committee for the PDF/UA standards.
Advisor and beta tester to software companies for building accessibility tools.

Yes, you can make pretty much any PDF accessible with Adobe Acrobat Pro DC. But it's time-consuming, tedious, frustrating, and a royal PITA. See below for some software options.
It would be wonderful if Affinity would license an excellent plug-in by Axaio Software, Made To Tag at https://www.axaio.com/doku.php/en:products:madetotag. It puts an accessibility panel into the program and also converts it to PDF/UA-1 compliant PDFs.  Right now it's available for InDesign and QuarkXPress.
Although InDesign is an excellent program, it's overkill for basic graphic design documents. So many in our design community could benefit from Affinity Publisher having accessibility tools.
For now, those using Affinity Publisher would have to remediate the PDF with either software (Adobe Acrobat Pro DC or CommonLook PDF are my shop's 2 favorites) or hire an outside service to do it. Both take time and add costs to your project's budget. 
And there's a learning curve for accessibility. No tool has a magic wand that makes the PDF accessible. YOU have to learn how to judge if it did the job right, whether the correct tags were used for the content, and if the Alt-Text is appropriate for the graphics.
Disclaimer: I make my living by teaching designers, writing books and online tutorials, and consulting with companies on their accessibility products. I don't make anything from Adobe, Affinity, Microsoft, CommonLook, or any other company whose software was mentioned. I try to be as objective — and helpful — as possible.
—Bevi Chagnon
Designer | Teacher | Author | Expert for Accessible Documents
Learn about accessibility at our free blog, www.PubCom.com/blog
   

Yes, you can make pretty much any PDF accessible with Adobe Acrobat Pro DC. But it's time-consuming, tedious, frustrating, and a royal PITA. See below for some software options.
It would be wonderful if Affinity would license an excellent plug-in by Axaio Software, Made To Tag at https://www.axaio.com/doku.php/en:products:madetotag. It puts an accessibility panel into the program and also converts it to PDF/UA-1 compliant PDFs.  Right now it's available for InDesign and QuarkXPress.
Although InDesign is an excellent program, it's overkill for basic graphic design documents. So many in our design community could benefit from Affinity Publisher having accessibility tools.
For now, those using Affinity Publisher would have to remediate the PDF with either software (Adobe Acrobat Pro DC or CommonLook PDF are my shop's 2 favorites) or hire an outside service to do it. Both take time and add costs to your project's budget. 
And there's a learning curve for accessibility. No tool has a magic wand that makes the PDF accessible. YOU have to learn how to judge if it did the job right, whether the correct tags were used for the content, and if the Alt-Text is appropriate for the graphics.
Disclaimer: I make my living by teaching designers, writing books and online tutorials, and consulting with companies on their accessibility products. I don't make anything from Adobe, Affinity, Microsoft, CommonLook, or any other company whose software was mentioned. I try to be as objective — and helpful — as possible.
—Bevi Chagnon
Designer | Teacher | Author | Expert for Accessible Documents
Learn about accessibility at our free blog, www.PubCom.com/blog
   

Yes, you can make pretty much any PDF accessible with Adobe Acrobat Pro DC. But it's time-consuming, tedious, frustrating, and a royal PITA. See below for some software options.
It would be wonderful if Affinity would license an excellent plug-in by Axaio Software, Made To Tag at https://www.axaio.com/doku.php/en:products:madetotag. It puts an accessibility panel into the program and also converts it to PDF/UA-1 compliant PDFs.  Right now it's available for InDesign and QuarkXPress.
Although InDesign is an excellent program, it's overkill for basic graphic design documents. So many in our design community could benefit from Affinity Publisher having accessibility tools.
For now, those using Affinity Publisher would have to remediate the PDF with either software (Adobe Acrobat Pro DC or CommonLook PDF are my shop's 2 favorites) or hire an outside service to do it. Both take time and add costs to your project's budget. 
And there's a learning curve for accessibility. No tool has a magic wand that makes the PDF accessible. YOU have to learn how to judge if it did the job right, whether the correct tags were used for the content, and if the Alt-Text is appropriate for the graphics.
Disclaimer: I make my living by teaching designers, writing books and online tutorials, and consulting with companies on their accessibility products. I don't make anything from Adobe, Affinity, Microsoft, CommonLook, or any other company whose software was mentioned. I try to be as objective — and helpful — as possible.
—Bevi Chagnon
Designer | Teacher | Author | Expert for Accessible Documents
Learn about accessibility at our free blog, www.PubCom.com/blog
   

Yes, you can make pretty much any PDF accessible with Adobe Acrobat Pro DC. But it's time-consuming, tedious, frustrating, and a royal PITA. See below for some software options.
It would be wonderful if Affinity would license an excellent plug-in by Axaio Software, Made To Tag at https://www.axaio.com/doku.php/en:products:madetotag. It puts an accessibility panel into the program and also converts it to PDF/UA-1 compliant PDFs.  Right now it's available for InDesign and QuarkXPress.
Although InDesign is an excellent program, it's overkill for basic graphic design documents. So many in our design community could benefit from Affinity Publisher having accessibility tools.
For now, those using Affinity Publisher would have to remediate the PDF with either software (Adobe Acrobat Pro DC or CommonLook PDF are my shop's 2 favorites) or hire an outside service to do it. Both take time and add costs to your project's budget. 
And there's a learning curve for accessibility. No tool has a magic wand that makes the PDF accessible. YOU have to learn how to judge if it did the job right, whether the correct tags were used for the content, and if the Alt-Text is appropriate for the graphics.
Disclaimer: I make my living by teaching designers, writing books and online tutorials, and consulting with companies on their accessibility products. I don't make anything from Adobe, Affinity, Microsoft, CommonLook, or any other company whose software was mentioned. I try to be as objective — and helpful — as possible.
—Bevi Chagnon
Designer | Teacher | Author | Expert for Accessible Documents
Learn about accessibility at our free blog, www.PubCom.com/blog
   

Accessible files can be accessed, read, processed, and used by those with disabilities who must use assistive technologies with their computers: they include screen readers, magnification software, dyslexia software, and mobility software (when someone can't operate a keyboard or mouse).
Accessible ICT (Information Communications Technology, such as PDFs, EPUB, digital media, websites) is required by the governments of most industrialized countries; it is usually part of the country's civil rights and equal access to education legislation, such as the ADA in the US. See this world map for details: https://www.3playmedia.com/blog/countries-that-have-adopted-wcag-standards-map/  But note that many more countries are in the process of formally adopting the standards and are already producing accessible files.
The United Nations and other non-partisan international organizations promote accessibility because nearly 1/3 of the world's population has a disability or impairment that prevents them from reading and using digital content. See https://www.karlencommunications.com/DisabilityRights.html
Accessibility means any type of file that is available digitally, whether via a website or other type of media, must meet the accessibility requirements spelled out by the PDF/UA-1 standards (for PDFs), WCAG 2.1 (for websites), and EPUB 3 (for EPUBs).  From Affinity Publisher, it would apply to PDFs and EPUBs made from Publisher layouts.
The standards are international: individual countries pass the legislation that requires the various accessibility standards to ensure that no citizen is prevented from accessing and reading digital information, such as textbooks for school, financial and legal paperwork, user manuals, employment/school/work applications, news, libraries/research ... just about everything we all read and/or download from the web.
Graphic designers create the bulk of this type of content, and right now, only MS Word, Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress have tools to export tagged, accessible PDFs.
There's an opportunity for Affinity to add accessibility tools to Publisher and create a solid competitor to InDesign. I can't begin to count the number of designers who work for governments (national and local), academia (preschool through post-secondary), or for major industries that are required to have accessible ICT.  They're stuck with InDesign because it's the only viable tool right now.
They'd jump ship in a heartbeat if Affinity gave them accessibility tools in Publisher.
—Bevi Chagnon / PubCom.com
Trainer, consultant, and book author for accessible documents.
US Delegate to the ISO committee for the PDF/UA standards.
Advisor and beta tester to software companies for building accessibility tools.

Accessible files can be accessed, read, processed, and used by those with disabilities who must use assistive technologies with their computers: they include screen readers, magnification software, dyslexia software, and mobility software (when someone can't operate a keyboard or mouse).
Accessible ICT (Information Communications Technology, such as PDFs, EPUB, digital media, websites) is required by the governments of most industrialized countries; it is usually part of the country's civil rights and equal access to education legislation, such as the ADA in the US. See this world map for details: https://www.3playmedia.com/blog/countries-that-have-adopted-wcag-standards-map/  But note that many more countries are in the process of formally adopting the standards and are already producing accessible files.
The United Nations and other non-partisan international organizations promote accessibility because nearly 1/3 of the world's population has a disability or impairment that prevents them from reading and using digital content. See https://www.karlencommunications.com/DisabilityRights.html
Accessibility means any type of file that is available digitally, whether via a website or other type of media, must meet the accessibility requirements spelled out by the PDF/UA-1 standards (for PDFs), WCAG 2.1 (for websites), and EPUB 3 (for EPUBs).  From Affinity Publisher, it would apply to PDFs and EPUBs made from Publisher layouts.
The standards are international: individual countries pass the legislation that requires the various accessibility standards to ensure that no citizen is prevented from accessing and reading digital information, such as textbooks for school, financial and legal paperwork, user manuals, employment/school/work applications, news, libraries/research ... just about everything we all read and/or download from the web.
Graphic designers create the bulk of this type of content, and right now, only MS Word, Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress have tools to export tagged, accessible PDFs.
There's an opportunity for Affinity to add accessibility tools to Publisher and create a solid competitor to InDesign. I can't begin to count the number of designers who work for governments (national and local), academia (preschool through post-secondary), or for major industries that are required to have accessible ICT.  They're stuck with InDesign because it's the only viable tool right now.
They'd jump ship in a heartbeat if Affinity gave them accessibility tools in Publisher.
—Bevi Chagnon / PubCom.com
Trainer, consultant, and book author for accessible documents.
US Delegate to the ISO committee for the PDF/UA standards.
Advisor and beta tester to software companies for building accessibility tools.

Accessible files can be accessed, read, processed, and used by those with disabilities who must use assistive technologies with their computers: they include screen readers, magnification software, dyslexia software, and mobility software (when someone can't operate a keyboard or mouse).
Accessible ICT (Information Communications Technology, such as PDFs, EPUB, digital media, websites) is required by the governments of most industrialized countries; it is usually part of the country's civil rights and equal access to education legislation, such as the ADA in the US. See this world map for details: https://www.3playmedia.com/blog/countries-that-have-adopted-wcag-standards-map/  But note that many more countries are in the process of formally adopting the standards and are already producing accessible files.
The United Nations and other non-partisan international organizations promote accessibility because nearly 1/3 of the world's population has a disability or impairment that prevents them from reading and using digital content. See https://www.karlencommunications.com/DisabilityRights.html
Accessibility means any type of file that is available digitally, whether via a website or other type of media, must meet the accessibility requirements spelled out by the PDF/UA-1 standards (for PDFs), WCAG 2.1 (for websites), and EPUB 3 (for EPUBs).  From Affinity Publisher, it would apply to PDFs and EPUBs made from Publisher layouts.
The standards are international: individual countries pass the legislation that requires the various accessibility standards to ensure that no citizen is prevented from accessing and reading digital information, such as textbooks for school, financial and legal paperwork, user manuals, employment/school/work applications, news, libraries/research ... just about everything we all read and/or download from the web.
Graphic designers create the bulk of this type of content, and right now, only MS Word, Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress have tools to export tagged, accessible PDFs.
There's an opportunity for Affinity to add accessibility tools to Publisher and create a solid competitor to InDesign. I can't begin to count the number of designers who work for governments (national and local), academia (preschool through post-secondary), or for major industries that are required to have accessible ICT.  They're stuck with InDesign because it's the only viable tool right now.
They'd jump ship in a heartbeat if Affinity gave them accessibility tools in Publisher.
—Bevi Chagnon / PubCom.com
Trainer, consultant, and book author for accessible documents.
US Delegate to the ISO committee for the PDF/UA standards.
Advisor and beta tester to software companies for building accessibility tools.

+1 please. These accessibility tags can also bed used to optimise CVs and other documents for ATS and similar automated processing of documents.

Accessible files can be accessed, read, processed, and used by those with disabilities who must use assistive technologies with their computers: they include screen readers, magnification software, dyslexia software, and mobility software (when someone can't operate a keyboard or mouse).
Accessible ICT (Information Communications Technology, such as PDFs, EPUB, digital media, websites) is required by the governments of most industrialized countries; it is usually part of the country's civil rights and equal access to education legislation, such as the ADA in the US. See this world map for details: https://www.3playmedia.com/blog/countries-that-have-adopted-wcag-standards-map/  But note that many more countries are in the process of formally adopting the standards and are already producing accessible files.
The United Nations and other non-partisan international organizations promote accessibility because nearly 1/3 of the world's population has a disability or impairment that prevents them from reading and using digital content. See https://www.karlencommunications.com/DisabilityRights.html
Accessibility means any type of file that is available digitally, whether via a website or other type of media, must meet the accessibility requirements spelled out by the PDF/UA-1 standards (for PDFs), WCAG 2.1 (for websites), and EPUB 3 (for EPUBs).  From Affinity Publisher, it would apply to PDFs and EPUBs made from Publisher layouts.
The standards are international: individual countries pass the legislation that requires the various accessibility standards to ensure that no citizen is prevented from accessing and reading digital information, such as textbooks for school, financial and legal paperwork, user manuals, employment/school/work applications, news, libraries/research ... just about everything we all read and/or download from the web.
Graphic designers create the bulk of this type of content, and right now, only MS Word, Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress have tools to export tagged, accessible PDFs.
There's an opportunity for Affinity to add accessibility tools to Publisher and create a solid competitor to InDesign. I can't begin to count the number of designers who work for governments (national and local), academia (preschool through post-secondary), or for major industries that are required to have accessible ICT.  They're stuck with InDesign because it's the only viable tool right now.
They'd jump ship in a heartbeat if Affinity gave them accessibility tools in Publisher.
—Bevi Chagnon / PubCom.com
Trainer, consultant, and book author for accessible documents.
US Delegate to the ISO committee for the PDF/UA standards.
Advisor and beta tester to software companies for building accessibility tools.

Does Publisher have accessibility tools yet?
Need to make accessible PDFs from layouts for US, Canada, EU, Asia, etc. and accessibility is required by country laws.
Must meet the PDF/UA-1 international accessibility standard (ISO 14289).