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I'm trying to make a pdf accessible to screen readers, but I can't find a way to make the foot notes accessible.
If I mark them up as text they will all be read out loud at the end of each page without any relation to the word or sentence they are related to. If I make a link from the number in the text to the foot note. The accessibility report defines the foot notes as inaccessible.
Is there another and easier way to do it?
Regards
Lea
Tagging a range of PDF content as "Text", with TORU, gives you the paragraph tag for the content that was selected.
Text to speech, for Western writing, is going to be left to right, down, left to right...
So, read out loud is performing as expected/designed.
Using the Link tool to place a link annotation that links the footnote character to the footnote does not create a fully formed "link tag" in the PDF; thus, it is still inaccessible.
"Easier way?" - Yes, return to the authoring file. Authoring applications such as Adobe FrameMaker, Adobe InDesign, and Microsoft Word provide upfront tag management.
Tagged output from FrameMaker files that contain inserted footnotes will contain the PDF note -Note- element/tag.
This PDF tag is explicitely for entries such as footnotes.
Assistive technology would use the -Note- tag as its "hook" for providing the end-user focus on PDF document content associated with footnotes.
Altenatively, MS Word's inserted footnotes utilize hypertext to "connect" the footnote letter/number to its associated content.
In the tagged output PDF, a correctly formed -Link- element is present.
However, the method used by Word precludes providing an explicite mapping to the PDF element -Note-.
Starting wih an untagged PDF you've two choices.
Let Acrobat look over the PDF and tag it or do all manually with TORU then buff it up by refining the tag tree with appropriate tags that TORU does not have.
Already having the document content tagged as text
(the PDF paragraph element -P-) you can manually edit to incorporate the -Note- tag to provide explicite identification of footnotes.
Alternatively, you can continue with the approach using the element.To use -Note- you'll want to add tags and setup nesting for something like this:
-Span- .....[container]document content (the footnote letter/number)
.....-Note- (Inline structure element, ILSE)
......... (authoring application's paragraph tag/style role mapped to the -P- element)
...............-Span-....................[container] document content (the footnote content)
To help incorporate the link annotations you've been using the following may help.
(Adding links with the Link tool does not add the required "Link-OBJR" element (tag) so, the link annotation is inaccessible.)
The following is a synopsis from Adobe’s “Creating Accessible PDF Documents with Adobe Acrobat 7.0, A Guide for Publishing PDF Documents for Use by People with Disabilities” (page 103).
http://www.adobe.cm/enterprise/accessibility/pdfs/acro7_pg_ue.pdf
Note: If you have followed the Adobe PDF accessibility workflow that is described in this guide, the URLs and other links in the PDF document are probably correctly tagged in the tag tree for accessibility, and you shouldn’t need to use this section.
If, however, you added links to a tagged PDF document by using the Links tool or by applying the Create From URLs In Document command, follow the instructions in this section to complete the tagging for the links.
To be accessible, each link in a PDF document must have three tags, presented in the following order, in the tag tree:
1. A parent -Link- tag.
2. A child Link-OBJR tag.
3. A child document content tag.
The parent -Link- tag declares the presence of the link.
The Link-OBJR tag gives assistive technology (AT) the “hook” needed by AT to present the link to the end-user.
The document content tag identifies the associated PDF page content the is the “link”.
Adding the link.
When the Links tool or Create From URLs In Document command is used you get the document content tag.
Neither the parent -Link- tag nor the child Link-OBJR tag are created.
Without Link-OBJR, the link is “unmarked” and inaccessible to AT.
Locate each occurrence of the unmarked links in the tag tree.
Add the parent -Link- tag and, to the parent, add the child Link-OBJR tag.
To find the umarked link(s):
From the Tags panel, open the Options (cogwheels icon) drop-down menu.
Select “Highlight Content” then select Find.
Select “Unmarked Links” for the “Find” choice.
Search the page/document.
When an unmarked link is found it is highlighted.
Having the first highlighted content, you must return to the Options drop-down menu and select “Find Tag From Selection”.
In the Tags panel the selected document content will be located.
You may have to scroll some through the Tags panel.
Selecting the document content (has a “box”/container) you now make a new tag (Options drop-down, “New Tag”).
In the New Tag dialog you select Link as the tag type then click OK.
A -Link- tag appears below the selected document content tag.
Drag the document content tag below the -Link- tag which makes the document content tag a child of the parent -Link- tag.
Now, in the Tags panel select the -Link- tag you just created.
From the Options drop-down menu, select “Find” and in the Find dialog, select Find: “Unmarked Links”.
Click Find.
The document content you are working on is located.
Click “Tag Element” - two events occur:
The Link-OBJR tag appears as a child to the parent -Link- tag and is directly above the document content tag.
Tagging for *this* link is complete.
Observe that Acrobat has now highlighted the next unmarked link.
Repeat what was done for the first link on each unmarked link.
The more links you have added, the more rides you get on the merry-go-round.
Which does sort of reinforce the desire to use an appropriate authoring application and learn how to use it to support, upfront, the output of well formed output PDF (gets you the brass ring on the first go-round. 8^)
Be well...