Accessible PDF (tagged PDF) and (accessible) EPUB with Publisher?

[SallijaneG]

On 5/13/2023 at 6:19 PM, Red Sands said:

I have read oceans of uninformed nonsense on the subject in other threads on this forum, but we are many years into quite serious and understandable requirements and expectations for PDFs around the globe. It makes no sense to me why Serif is still in the paper world, but it makes it crystal clear to potential customers why they cannot choose Affinity. 

Publications Office of the European Union: Accessible publishing

Does WCAG apply to PDFs?

Why PDF Accessibility is Important For Higher Education

Understanding accessible PDFs (What is an accessible pdf, and why does it matter?)

Accessible PDF Best Practices

Not to mention equal requirements in the USA:

Section 508 and WCAG?

Section 508 is a law that states anytime the federal government develops, procures, maintains, or uses ICT employees and members of the public with disabilities seeking information, data or services from the Department must have the same or comparable access as those without disabilities. 

I do a lot of hybrid publications that are printed and viewed on the Web, I had someone demonstrate what a screen reader does with a PDF and was appalled at how inaccessible they are by nature.  This is mission-critical; we need to be able to produce accessible PDFs from Publisher files, and although I am personally in an organization that has someone who can take the extra time it needs from Publisher as compared to InDesign, it will be a major stumbling block for growth.  I am an amateur; my work is for grassroots groups that cannot afford Adobe and I personally refuse to spend the extra for a subscription, but I am an exception, willing to muddle through.  Generally, this will be a deal-breaker for many.

[SallijaneG]

On 11/9/2022 at 10:58 AM, galexa said:

I'm trying not to be shocked that they haven't included ePub and other export options in the new version. A quick search shows it being asked for in 2018 so maybe it's never going to happen. Disappointed but no need to upgrade so...

One of the big requests was provided: footnotes!  Now we all need to keep clamoring for tagged PDF/EPUB options!

[SallijaneG]

On 3/10/2023 at 8:15 PM, HawaiiAna said:

Same here. I would love to know too. There is a lot of talk about accessibility and some countries are implementing strict laws. It's just going to get bigger and bigger. I rarely use forums but this topic is too important and I already posted 4 comments hoping to attract Serif's attention to it. And if they are working on it why not tell everybody so we can sleep peacefully knowing the feature is coming. 

I have a colleague who is able to do it manually with Adobe Acrobat, but we are a small grassroots group that publishes <1 document per month.  Not sure about better options for those with serious volumes, but this is a serious missing piece and should be the single item for which we all clamor.  They did listen to all the requests for footnotes, so maybe. . . . .?

[R. C. Schletty]

Lo and behold! See what has been added to Affinity version 2.3. Alt text (for screen reader accessibility) can now be added to images and objects in a PDF file. Looks like we have to wait longer for ePUB export.

https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/whats-new/

Tags Panel for adding alt text to images and objects

The new Tags Panel in Affinity Publisher allows you to add alt text to any image or object when exported to PDF for accessibility purposes. To use, just open the Tags Panel from the Window menu, select the image or object you want to add alt text to, and add your description in the box.

Alt Text Source

As well as adding your own custom description to any object, you can also choose to scrape the alt text from the Title, Description or Headline meta data which may be embedded within the image in question.

Mark as Decoration

You also have the option to ‘Mark as Decoration’. This means no image description will be exported or used by screen readers as the item is purely there for decorative purposes rather than important to the understanding of the document. Marking as a decoration is primarily used to positively tag an image as not needing a description, so it’s not flagged in preflight.

Preflight

Options have also been added in preflight to make it easy to check your document for any missing alt text should you wish. When creating or editing a profile, you will see a new section for alt text. Here you can choose whether you want preflight to return a warning if images, placed documents or vector objects do not have alt text added (or marked as decoration).

Export

There is now a new ‘Tagged PDF’ option in the advanced section of PDF export. This is required to be checked if you wish to export your PDF, including any tags you have added.

[JohannaH]

I'm going to test this.

[HawaiiAna]

From today's newsletter: "The Tags Panel in Affinity Publisher 2.3 is just the start of a series of improvements we’re making to PDF accessibility. Upcoming updates will provide support for reading order, heading tags and other document structure tools that will further enhance your PDFs."

How AWESOME is that? Thanks, Serif team!

[Bit Disappointed]

1 hour ago, HawaiiAna said:

From today's newsletter: "The Tags Panel in Affinity Publisher 2.3 is just the start of a series of improvements we’re making to PDF accessibility. Upcoming updates will provide support for reading order, heading tags and other document structure tools that will further enhance your PDFs."

The ability to create accessible PDFs began to develop with the introduction of basic accessibility features in PDF version 1.2 in 1996. Significant advancements occurred with PDF 1.4 in 2001, particularly with the release of Adobe Acrobat 5. This version introduced tagged PDFs, enabling structural information about the document's content, essential for screen readers and other assistive technologies. Further improvements have been made over the years, especially with the introduction of the PDF/UA (Universal Accessibility) standard in 2012, which sets clear guidelines for creating fully accessible PDF documents.

The European Union (EU) started mandating accessible PDFs with the adoption of the Web Accessibility Directive (Directive (EU) 2016/2102) in December 2016. This directive requires EU member states to ensure that websites and mobile apps of public sector bodies are accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities.

So, yes please, it's about time for support. And for those who are slow to catch on, it's not just users of public websites and services who need accessible PDFs, it’s just that this is where legislation has been possible.

[Layoutman]

I make accessible PDFs, because my best customers cannot any more accept anything else. The situation has been here the same over 2 years. That's declared by the rules how public money can be consumed. 

Adobe Indesign offers a way to make PDFs which Adobe call "Accessible". Hopefully Serif succeeds to avoid copying the inferior solution of Adobe. Let me explain some of the most idiotic features of the Adobe solution:

The result is not Accessible - no matter what Adobe Acrobat accessibility checker happens to write. Actually Adobe has understood how to avoid lawsuits. Acrobat doesn't claim anything accessible. It says only "No errors were found". As useful as a blind chicken!

The result does not fulfill formal PDF/UA nor WGAC accessibility criterions. A good formal accessibility tester is PAC 2021. Virtually any image, link, table ad form field is tagged wrong by Indesign and must be manually fixed in Acrobat. Especially often attribute objects bounding box and placement  are missing or wrong. Unfortunately fixing manually is not so easy. There are at least as many errors as there's images, links tables and form fields. In addition the the tag tree is full of Span and Story tags. The tags which need fixing are hidden deep.  It's much easier to tag say 100 page book manually in Acrobat than to fix the mess generated by Indesign.

A big part of the problem is Adobe's idea to use text styles as the basis of tagging. Layout artists hate it. (I like use a couple of them because their artistic ability and stylistic confidence is a high boost of what I can deliver).

In Indesign any piece of text must in any case to be selected  in Indesign and marked to be included to the tagged content. It would be a gift from the heaven if  the used tag could be inserted in this phase and the tagging by text style could be totally skipped. If someone really wants the story and span tag -jumble caused by tagging by text style -idea I gladly like to let him continue in his masochism, but I do not want the same. That's way I tag manually in Acrobat. 

Tagging in Acrobat has a drawback. The customers often want to make content changes. They do not understand why in the hell I do not give already the first version as an accessible PDF, but before making the tagged PDF I require an email confirmation "this version is final and the next change will be paid separately"

The customers have learned to require some quality. Many of my rivals are dropped because

- some of them only said "this PDF is accessible" I reality there could be say 100 red and 200 yellow errors in PAC2021 checklists and the screen reader simulation could be unreadable.

- some of them did not lie, but they do not know how to convert PDFs accessible in Acrobat or have found it too difficult.

Today the customers do not accept a single red nor yellow error in PAC2021's PDF/UA nor WGAC checklists. In addition the PAC2021's screen reader simulator must show a simple linear layout which contains proper captions and alt texts for images and links. The text level must not change randomly. A single paragraph must look a single paragraph.

Adobe stuff costs too much. Your products are more affordable and the developments in ver.2 make also professional usage meaningful. Hopefully this happens also in the field of accessibility. But do it properly, without copying the Indesign approach.

 

Edited December 9, 2023 by Layoutman
more complete

[Patrick Connor]

@Layoutman

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums  and thank you for your detailed input on this topic.

[JohannaH]

2 hours ago, Layoutman said:

The result does not fulfill formal PDF/UA nor WGAC accessibility criterions. A good formal accessibility tester is PAC 2021. Virtually any image, link, table ad form field is tagged wrong by Indesign and must be manually fixed in Acrobat. Especially often attribute objects bounding box and placement  are missing or wrong.

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.

[Layoutman]

17 hours ago, JohannaH said:

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.

AND

....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.

Thanks, but the link text is nailed by the writer. It's how he wants it appear in printed versions. The publisher (=the same for the printed and PDF version) doesn't accept any visual differences between the contents of the printed and PDF versions.  Period.  Often there's an image which clearly refers to the existence of some available online content. In such case I get an yellow tag  which says " make the image also to work as a weblink!"

Screenreader NVDA is popular where I live. Adobe Reader's "read aloud" and also what's in Windows are considered as crap. The customers are gradually starting to demand that NVDA must read links understandable. Alt text is the way to make it possible. Something which maybe is good (https://a superlong cyptic string ) for copying and pasting to the browser address line is not the right aural appearance of the link. 

I guess that missing bounding box attribute is a problem for PAC itself. It's screen reader simulator cannot show the right portion of the screen when there's a figure tag with wrong or none bounding box attribute. 

 

Edited December 10, 2023 by Layoutman
fixed an error

[FvdG]

As long as lists are not tagged/coded as such, or TOC, or no support for Heading H tag nor for correct tagging of hyperlinks the exported PDF does not comply with WCAG nor 508 (let alone PDF/UA).

Therefore you must do all that sort of tagging in Acrobat on a PDF exported from Publisher.

And no one needing WCAG/508 compliant accessible PDF’s is going to touch A Publisher therefore.

Step up your game Affinity or Canva or… whoever these days….

[PSDfield]

8 minutes ago, FvdG said:

As long as lists are not tagged/coded as such, or TOC, or no support for Heading H tag nor for correct tagging of hyperlinks the exported PDF does not comply with WCAG nor 508 (let alone PDF/UA).

Therefore you must do all that sort of tagging in Acrobat on a PDF exported from Publisher.

And no one needing WCAG/508 compliant accessible PDF’s is going to touch A Publisher therefore.

Step up your game Affinity or Canva or… whoever these days….

Was also very confused by the result - everything is taged as <div> - the PAC https://pdfua.foundation/en/pdf-accessibility-checker-pac/ helps to preview the result for srreenreaders and it is disapointing, so far I can only create PDF/UA documents with Libre Office -> you can edit exported PDFs with Libre Office Draw with some good results to make the document more accessible but it is alot of work-around