Matt Campbell

1 month ago

Matt Campbell
1 month ago

Question for any #blind users who work with PDFs and are lucky enough to get high-quality tagged PDFs: The PDF readers in Edge and Firefox both support tagged PDF to some degree. Have you found that their level of tagged PDF support is good enough, or do you find that you still have to resort to Adobe Reader/Acrobat to get the best results? For macOS users, how good is the Preview app's tagged PDF support in practice?

#blind

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in reply to Matt Campbell

Jason J.G. White

in reply to Matt Campbell 1 month ago

Tagged PDF wasn't supported in Chromium-based browsers when I last tried it. Apple's support can be awkward at times (e.g., requiring the user to "interact" with lists to read their contents), but it does work at least at a basic level. At least in the scholarly sources that I read, I am more likely to find an HtML version than a tagged PDF version, and of course untagged PDF remains common.

in reply to Matt Campbell

miki

in reply to Matt Campbell 1 month ago

PDF forms are still pretty much Adobe only.

That's a real shame, as it's really not that bad of a format, and it's not like we have any other options that accomplish similar objectives. We certainly don't have a good web stack alternative, and I think that's a real shame.

in reply to miki

Quin

in reply to miki 1 month ago

@miki PDF is a horrendous format, at least if you have to try and parse it. Literally every single format, without fail, I added to Paperback contained text content or markup in some way. PDF though? Have fun with graphics operators and glyph IDs. I hate PDF. It can die.

@miki

in reply to Quin

miki

in reply to Quin 1 month ago

@TheQuinbox Agree with you 100% when it comes to PDF in general.

When it comes to forms specifically, there's no other format that lets you do what PDF does, which is treating them as files.

@Quin

in reply to miki

Quin

in reply to miki 1 month ago

@miki Oh, yes for forms it's unfortunately all we've got. Hmm, maybe a bucket list item of mine should be making a file format for form data that doesn't suck.

@miki

in reply to Quin

miki

in reply to Quin 1 month ago

@TheQuinbox I wonder if there's anybody at W3 and/or Whatwg doing that. They seem like the most relevant groups to do this under.

@Quin

in reply to miki

miki

in reply to miki 1 month ago

@TheQuinbox One reason why PDF forms are (somewhat) popular over here is that they're compatible with the whole edifice of European electronic signatures, which, unlike their US counterparts, are so cryptographically secure that nobody really knows how to use them.

@Quin

in reply to Matt Campbell

James Scholes

in reply to Matt Campbell 4 weeks ago

Not sufficient, no. Firefox in particular separates text that should be read together as a single unit onto multiple lines, sometimes presenting as little as one character per line making documents unreadable.

in reply to Matt Campbell

Toni Barth

in reply to Matt Campbell 4 weeks ago

Weirdly enough, I just recently noticed that at least Chrome interprets tags wrongly. Like, my PDF got level 1, 2 and 3 headings, which Adobe Reader announces properly. Chrome interprets h1-level headings as h2, h2 as h3 and doesn't recognize and headings deeper than that at all. So yeah, a correct interpretation seems to be an Adobe thing still. Haven't tried Firefox yet.

in reply to Toni Barth

James Scholes

in reply to Toni Barth 4 weeks ago

I don't think Chrome actually supports most (any?) of the tags that are present in a PDF, but instead just makes up its own regardless of the state of the original document. @matt

@Matt Campbell

This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)

in reply to James Scholes

Matt Campbell

in reply to James Scholes 4 weeks ago

@jscholes @ToniBarth Certainly in my testing, Chrome didn't pick up image alt text in a tagged PDF that definitely had alt text in the tags.

@Toni Barth @James Scholes

in reply to Matt Campbell

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

in reply to Matt Campbell 4 weeks ago

On windows adobe is still the only thing that supports fillable forms. So seeing as I’m forced to keep it installed for that I just use it for everything.

in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

Alex the Christmas Chap🎄🎅

in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 4 weeks ago

@fastfinge Oh wow what the hell, I had no idea that Adobe was the only thing that fully supported forms in PDFs like that, so much for everyone trying not to get locked into specific vendors for this sort of stuff, nice going Adobe.

@🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

in reply to Alex the Christmas Chap🎄🎅

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

in reply to Alex the Christmas Chap🎄🎅 4 weeks ago

I think other things support it. Just not accessibly.

in reply to Matt Campbell

Tara Owton

in reply to Matt Campbell 4 weeks ago

Yep, that’s my experience of filling in PDF forms too, Adobe reader is the only program where you can work with forms. However, Google Chrome deals better with some untagged PDF documents than Adobe Reader does.

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Matt Campbell 1 month ago • •

Matt Campbell
1 month ago