[libreoffice-users] [accessibility] support of PDF UA

Hi :)
I thought some people on the users-list might be able to help a bit more.  I tried to space the 
answers to make it clearer and tidied a little.  I hope it's still true to what you wanted to say.  
Regards from
Tom :)


--- On Tue, 7/2/12, Jaap van de Putte <info@2useit.nl> wrote:

Hi Christophe,

My answers are below, between your questions :)

Op 7-2-2012 14:56, Christophe Strobbe schreef:
> Jaap,
>
> At 18:09 4-2-2012, Jaap van de Putte wrote:
> > (...) For websites the government in the Netherlands is following the accessibility guidelines 
> > from the W3C, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). (...)
> >
> > According to these Web Guidelines, government sites are obliged to offer their documents in an 
> > open and accessible format. For now the possibilities of LibreOffice in exporting a file are 
> > sufficient: you have to export it to PDF/A-1a. In the near future it will be necessary to use a 
> > new subversion of PDF, PDF/UA (Universal Accessibility). PDF/UA is more accessible than 
> > PDF/A-1a. More about this format you can read on ow.ly/8RxcQ <http://t.co/GZLiHl8b>.
> >
> > I am curious if new versions of LibreOffice will make it possible to export files to PDF/UA. If 
> > LibreOffice is going to support this format, it will make a huge difference when LibreOffice is 
> > compared to other office suites.  And it wil be must easier to promote LibreOffice to be used by 
> > government organizations.
>
> I agree this would be nice :-)
>
> I found your enhancement request at <https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=45636> and I 
> have a few questions:
>
> 1) Last year, I filed an enhancement request to enable tagged PDF by default: 
> <https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=39667>. If LibreOffice adds PDF/UA support, do you 
> think it should be enabled by default?


Personally I shouldn't prefer this, because approximately 95 % of PDFs do not have a proper heading 
organization or is not elsewhere optimized for accessibility. Choosing a PDF format that includes 
the structure of a document that hasn't have any structure in the source seems a bit useless ... 
And in that case it makes the PDF file unnecessary larger.


> 2) In the PDF Options dialog box, should "PDF/UA" replace the current "PDF/A-1a" or should it be 
> an additional check-box?


PDF/A-1a is also used for archive, id est that is the default function of A-1. I am no expert, but 
I should say that A-1a should be possible too. So PDF/UA would be an extra check-box. But I think 
this should be questioned to some experts.


> 3) If the user checks "PDF/UA" or "tagged PDF", should LibreOffice warn the user about 
> accessibility issues in the source document? (There is an accessibility checker for Writer, but 
> it is currently only available as an extension: [shameless plug] 
> <http://sourceforge.net/projects/accessodf/>. It may be submitted to LibreOffice, but it is in 
> Java, while LibreOffice wants to reduce its dependence on Java.)


I think that would be great. For a lot of people it is too much to install an extension. Does 
LibreOffice want to use Python in stead of Java? Than, could the extension be rewritten in Python? 
Of course this would need volunteers ... and I am not a programmer :(

Thanks for your response. It is good to know that PDF accessibility support has the attention of 
more people.

Kind regards,
Jaap van de Putte


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