Bring your karma
Join the waitlist today
HUMBLECAT.ORG

Blind and Visually Impaired Community

Full History - 2016 - 09 - 29 - ID#550lc6
5
Looking for experiences/resources that explain to me how visually impaired people access PDF/UA files (self.Blind)
submitted by Plot-Twist-Im-Carlos
I work for a company that sells document generation software. Obviously, a lot of what the software produces is in PDF format. We have basic PDF/UA compatibility, but we are having difficulty explaining to our customers (who want to make PDF/UA compliant documents) how to make **good** PDF/UA documents.

I've been tasked with writing a how-to guide of sorts, but I'm having difficulty finding anything about how people with impairments actually **use** the software, what software they use, etc.

I know in a broad sense how things should be tagged, but I'd really like to hear how people actually navigate documents, what shortcuts they use, how documents could be better, what makes documents confusing, etc.

So if you would please share your experiences, or point me to a good resource, that would be most appreciated! Any and all feedback would be great!

Cheers!

fastfinge 2 points 6y ago
Most documents are so badly tagged that I don't bother trying to use them as PDF files. I just use pdftotext to convert them to txt files and read them that way. It also means that I don't have to have any of Adobe's awful software installed on my machine.
Marconius 1 points 6y ago
PDFs are an absolute nightmare and I avoid them at all costs. Especially on the Mac, where the Adobe native software isn't accessible at all, and you might get lucky with reading through a little bit of the document through Preview or through a web browser. Voiceover in iOS can sometimes read the PDF, but it is all loaded in one go and if any notifications or anything comes up that throws off the voiceover cursor and pulls focus away from the text, you have to start all over again from the beginning. If a PDF is absolutely necessary, make sure it is tagged with headings and other potential navigation elements. I think headings are the best you can do, but overall avoiding PDFs altogether is ideal.
This nonprofit website is run by volunteers.
Please contribute if you can. Thank you!
Our mission is to provide everyone with access to large-
scale community websites for the good of humanity.
Without ads, without tracking, without greed.
©2023 HumbleCat Inc   •   HumbleCat is a 501(c)3 nonprofit based in Michigan, USA.