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Topic: RE: Creating accessible text tables
Conf: (P-PDF) PDF Accessibility, Msg: 133159
From: Marlene
Date: 5/21/2005 07:39 AM

Thanks for your response.


>
>As for InDesign... how are you
>making the PDFs? Are you
>simply printing
>to a PDF driver, or are you
>using the "Export to PDF"
>utility in
>InDesign, and allowing it to
>create Tags in your document?
>
I've been printing to the Adobe PDF drive (in both Quark and InDesign. I just tried the InDesign "export to PDF" -- the only reference to tags I found was "e-book" tags.

>See the "Authoring for
>accessibility and reflow in
>Adobe InDesign and
>Acrobat" instruction files on
>this page:
>
>http://www.adobe.com/products/
>acrobat/access_info.html
>
>They are a bit dated, but will
>be useful to you nonetheless,
>I suspect.
>
I've downloaded the files and will go through them this weekend.

>
>That description makes me
>wonder if you really have a
>table here, or
>instead have headers and
>footers in a two-column
>layout.
>
>If it's a real table, then the
>columns and/or rows must
>include header
>cells... information that
>delivers the context for the
>information in
>each data cell. If you define
>these header cells and the
>rest of the
>table correctly in terms of
>rows and cells, then the
>"reading order" of
>the table will take care of
>itself, because it will be
>accessed using
>table-aware software.
>
I've been using the table features in both Quark and InDesign. (It's definitely not a standard two-column text layout -- I tried that, and it was too much work to get all the text to line up correctly in the two columns -- and it didn't read correctly anyway.)

I don't know how either one handles the issue of "header cells" -- I can't find much information on the details of creating tables. If there's a feature for adding headers or any other "non-visible" tags or features, I don't know about it. Maybe I need to buy a third-party InDesign manual -- the help files haven't been very helpful; they don't spell out the procedures in enough detail.

>Also... what are you using as
>a screen-reader to test these
>files?
>Don't use Adobe's Read Out
>Loud function... it won't read
>a table as a
>proper screen-reader would.
>
Ah. The Acrobat Read Out Loud function is all I've got. I can't afford to buy a screen reader, especially since I would only use it to test files.

>> Any suggestions? Some of these tables are two or three pages
>> long, so I don't know if using alt text is even a viable
>> option. Is there a limit to how much alt text can be used in
>> one description?
>
>Oh, you don't want to go with
>alt. text here....
>
>> If upgrading to Quark 6.5 or InDesign 4 and Acrobat 7 Pro
>> will help deal with the problem, I'd do that in a heartbeat.
>
>Well, Acrobat 7.01
>Professional will make it FAR
>easier for you to tag
>the right reading order, or
>table structure, whichever is
>actually
>required.
>

Okay, I'll upgrade to the new Creative Suite as soon as I find the best deal. That way I'll have the latest versions of both Acrobat and InDesign.

Thanks,

Marlene