{"id":464,"date":"2020-07-29T19:02:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-29T18:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cerovac.com\/a11y\/?p=464"},"modified":"2020-07-31T09:47:27","modified_gmt":"2020-07-31T08:47:27","slug":"pdf-accessibility-introduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cerovac.com\/a11y\/2020\/07\/pdf-accessibility-introduction\/","title":{"rendered":"PDF accessibility – introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I am not an PDF (Portable Document Format) expert so I have mistakenly thought that if it is portable it should also be accessible. My first mistake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a Microsoft Office user I was always thinking that print to PDF will automatically include the title, language, headings, alt texts, links and other details in an accessible way if I have used them semantically correctly in the original document. My second mistake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

OK, then it must probably be a simple matter of some automatic conversion tool; I make sure the original document has all the needed info and the output will be then an accessible PDF. My third mistake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, after three mistakes I decided to investigate a bit more in depth, PDF accessibility is also a WCAG matter, so I stumbled upon their technical documentation (opens in new window)<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But how to make a PDF accessible in practice? WebAIM has a great article \/ how-to on it (opens in new window)<\/a> but it is heavy Adobe oriented. No wonder, as PDF was made an open standard by Adobe, I guess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I try to use open source as much as possible and I’ve investigated open source options to make a PDF accessible. Found this JAVA based HTML to PDF (opens in new window)<\/a>, but it requires usage of special CSS features to get good results. Maybe an option for some integration but I guess not very practical for simple one time conversions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there are some online tools, like for example PAVE online semi-auto-correct tool <\/a>(opens in new window), but it is worth mentioning that it is free for personal use only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still not satisfied with my search. Looking for more solutions and will post more on the subject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No, PDF is not accessible out of box, sorry to say. How to make it accessible then – an introduction<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,10],"tags":[160,150,74,159,161,78,29,119],"class_list":["post-464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a11y-resources","category-practical-a11y","tag-adobe","tag-css","tag-html","tag-java","tag-pave","tag-pdf","tag-wcag","tag-webaim"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cerovac.com\/a11y\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cerovac.com\/a11y\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cerovac.com\/a11y\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cerovac.com\/a11y\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cerovac.com\/a11y\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cerovac.com\/a11y\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cerovac.com\/a11y\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cerovac.com\/a11y\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cerovac.com\/a11y\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}