[stylist] PDF

[David Andrews]

Well you are close.  Tagging actually identifies the structure of a 
document, graphics, and the like and labels them so screen readers 
and other technology know what they are and how to deal with them.

At a broader level, a PDF can contain either text, or the image of a 
page.  It is the image type that is inaccessible.  OCR must be done 
on it to yield text.

Whether the PDF contains text or images depends on the source 
document and the program used to produce the PDF itself.

An untagged PDF can contain text, and depending on the complexity of 
the document may be quite readable, or understandable, or confusing.

Hope this makes sense.

Dave

At 02:25 AM 11/13/2012, you wrote:
>If the PDF has not been properly tagged, it will not be readable with a
>screenreader. Essentially, the PDF is recognized as a picture or graphic
>and screenreaders will therefore not read it, though I think JAWS 13 has
>the ability to say what a graphic is. If I'm right about this, I still
>don't believe it will read a improperly tagged PDF. In this situation,
>if you are able, you can print off the PDF then scan it back into your
>computer. This will work, but not always a guarantee it will scan 100%,
>though if you have an updated scanning program, in my experience, it
>works pretty well.
>
>Sincerely,
>Bridgit Kuenning-Pollpeter
>Read my blog at:
>http://blogs.livewellnebraska.com/author/bpollpeter/
>
>"History is not what happened; history is what was written down."
>The Expected One- Kathleen McGowan
>
>Message: 5
>Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2012 14:38:06 -0800
>From: Eve Sanchez <3rdeyeonly at gmail.com>
>To: "Writer's Division Mailing List" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
>Subject: Re: [stylist] pdf
>Message-ID:
>
><CACdbYKU9fq0rz6SWg+_tS2vx7sc8d69Cmb+=0XP2tbZCiBcjDw at mail.gmail.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
>My understanding has always been that it will not work because it can
>not work. You can not read a picture and that is what a graphic is. If
>there is a program/app/whatever that takes the written words from
>graphics and transfers them to text then it is wonderful. Have not had
>chance to check link yet, but I will. Eve