This is a place to document my process for making existing PDFs accessible. This is an evolving document because I keep on learning new things about PDF accessibility. If you are an expert in the field and if I’ve given incorrect information, please post a comment so I can continue to learn and fix my mistakes so others are not misled.
While there is information on the Internet concerning PDF accessibility, it is in many different places. There doesn’t seem to be one definitive place to find what I need, so I’m trying to gather that here for me and for those that work with me on making PDFs accessible.
Use the right side navigation to read the documentation. If you go in order from top to bottom, you’ll get all of the information. You can also pick and choose what you want to read, but if you’ve never worked with tags in a PDF file, I suggest you start at the top.
Until I read an answer to a question on the WebAim email list concerning page numbers in PDF files, I always marked page numbers as artifacts. After thinking about the answer (yes, tag the page number as text and have it read first) and deciding it made sense, I began doing just that and told the folks working with me to do the same.
Then one of the folks working with me questioned this practice because he thought that the user might get confused when a page number was read in the middle of the paragraph when paragraphs spanned two pages. I suggested that instead of automatically having the page number read first, perhaps figuring out where it best fit in the context would be better — like when the paragraph ended. However, I wanted to ask around and see how others handled page numbers in PDF files.
I asked this question on Twitter and got this answer:
I do not tag page numbers. That doesn’t mean it’s right. My logic is that page numbers within the context of the document is out of context.
The question I ask myself is where in the context of the TAGS would a page number make sense?
Again I thought about it and decided that v made sense.
So, now I no longer tag page numbers as text because besides the logical arguments against it, it sometimes takes a long time.
