capegreg

Just had a chat with my hubbie. He prepares all the online PDFs for work, does all the tagging etc and on his work laptop has accessibility checker software for highest tier. He told me to just give him my finished patterns on Affinity, send it to him and hell put it through his Acrobat writer at work and then through their accessibility checker software and manually check it himself and write tagging for me, correct anything I've done incorrectly. I just have to ensure no tables, full explanations of pics and diagrams included and he'll tag those for me. He'll ensure I don't end up with those nesting errors or style inconsistency problems etc. I am also talking to several knitwear designers who run accessibility checks for usability which is basically the type of instructions that you give knitters that differ from knitters with high vision. There is a Worldwide database of low vision knitting patterns and when you load one up, a checker has to approve them too. Obviously I'll try to get it right but if they get thrown off at least I know what to correct. I've seen some people get really offended if their pattern gets 'rejected' for non compliancy and other people commiserating with them 'I'm so sorry you have to go through this, its not fair' etc and I'm thinking why? If its not right, its not right, and you go back and fix issues. It's not a personal attack it's a requirement for access. And some people say 'well I tried my best, and THEY don't like it, that's all I'm doing. I don't have to do this'

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.

Agreed, and to that I add fixed-layout digital media as well, such as PDFs. Whether for print or for digital distribution, it still starts in layout.

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

This is necessary to meet Canadian Standards, the US ADA, and others. Besides when you make documents accessible everyone benefits.
Professor Shecter MFA RGD
 

There is a thread
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/65212-tagged-pdf-support-for-accessibility/
that has been going since 2018.
Can Serif make a statement in that thread about what it will do about this important issue please?
William Overington
Monday 25 January 2021
 
 
 

Hi @Nodsatcher,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Go to Affinity Preferences, Tools section and untick Enable canvas rotation with command+scroll wheel.

How can I turn off Rotate document view when I am pressing alt and scrooling?
This only started after I updated to 1.9 and its really annoying. so is there any way to turn this off?