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I am working with a pdf in which various text boxes in the doc file (which I did not create) are getting wrapped in figure tag. Could this be because the author grouped the elements in the original Word doc? The accessibility issue is that among the elements are web links and they are not formed like links in the pdf and thus JAWS cannot interact correctly with them. Any ideas are appreciated.
- Thanks, James
Any of the bounding "boxes" that Word places when Insert > file, clip art, text box etc. typically bound a graphic.
In MS Word, the "box" can be given Alternative Text . Brought into PDF, a "box" is associated with an xObject.
Consequence is, these are tagged as Figure elements.
A Word text box is using the same bounding "frame" methodology used for bounding an inserted graphic.
So regardless of the text box content in Word, in PDF we get Figure elements.
Of course, a Figure element is seen by AT as content that is not standard text that can be rendered.
So AT looks for the Alternate Text description.
Without the authoring file available for correcting the layout/format you may have to use Acrobat Professional
to manually edit a working copy of the PDF.
You may have to make the text boxes artifacts, then working in the Tags panel, create new tags for appropriate content followed by proper positioning of the tags in the structure tree.
For links - use "Create Links" - When in PDF, this is the [i]only[/i] means by which Acrobat can create all required components of an accessible link. Any other approachs will require manually editing the structure tree to make a link properly accessible.
Be well...
Be well...