PDF/UA Support

Andrew Dunning

19 Oct 2015 19 Oct '15

9:50 a.m.

Dear list, I am beginning to see increasing need for PDF/UA (ISO 14289) files. Earlier this year, the US Access Board announced an update to the rules for the accessibility of electronic documents produced by the government that embraces the standard, which I expect will make it much more prominent. XeTeX cannot produce PDF/UA, and it seems unlikely that it ever will, but unless I am misreading the documentation it appears that ConTeXt has already implemented the necessary functionality. If this is so, it would be helpful to have a page discussing its use in parallel to http://wiki.contextgarden.net/PDF/A, and I would even suggest making PDF/UA the default for documents that do not have conflicting commands. The PDF Association seems to be pushing this as the future of the format; if this is so, this is an opportunity to bring ConTeXt to much greater prominence. All best, Andrew Dunning PhD Candidate Centre for Medieval Studies University of Toronto http://andrewdunning.ca

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Hans Hagen

19 Oct 19 Oct

3:33 p.m.

On 10/19/2015 5:50 PM, Andrew Dunning wrote:

...

Dear list,

I am beginning to see increasing need for PDF/UA (ISO 14289) files. Earlier this year, the US Access Board announced an update to the rules for the accessibility of electronic documents produced by the government that embraces the standard, which I expect will make it much more prominent.

XeTeX cannot produce PDF/UA, and it seems unlikely that it ever will, but unless I am misreading the documentation it appears that ConTeXt has already implemented the necessary functionality. If this is so, it would be helpful to have a page discussing its use in parallel to http://wiki.contextgarden.net/PDF/A, and I would even suggest making PDF/UA the default for documents that do not have conflicting commands. The PDF Association seems to be pushing this as the future of the format; if this is so, this is an opportunity to bring ConTeXt to much greater prominence.

Indeed context supports tagged pdf already for a while, although only acrobat can do something with it. Making it default is not really an option as there is overhead involved (a bit more runtime and much larger filesize) that makes no sense when proofing documents and in workflows for print, but enabling is easy with \setuptagging[state=start] Btw, this feature relates to export to XML. Personally I wonder why this UA is such a hype, probably because publishers are reluctant to embed the document source in the pdf, which make much more sense when alternative rendering is needed. Feel free to add information to the wiki (I have no time for that myself now). Probably much that applies to the export also applies to tagging. Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | voip: 087 875 68 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------

Andrew Dunning

8:35 p.m.

...

On 19 Oct 2015, at 5:33 PM, Hans Hagen wrote:

Indeed context supports tagged pdf already for a while, although only acrobat can do something with it. Making it default is not really an option as there is overhead involved (a bit more runtime and much larger filesize) that makes no sense when proofing documents and in workflows for print, but enabling is easy with

\setuptagging[state=start]

Thank you! Would it also be possible to have something to the effect of `\setupbackend[format={pdf/ua:2014}` to set up the appropriate options?

...

Btw, this feature relates to export to XML. Personally I wonder why this UA is such a hype, probably because publishers are reluctant to embed the document source in the pdf, which make much more sense when alternative rendering is needed.

I agree that I would prefer to see PDFs given alongside good HTML, but the reality is that this will not happen for some time to come, and in the meantime PDFs remain inaccessible to anyone with a print disability (and inconvenient for the rest of us). If we can improve this situation, it is only right that we do so. If we can in the process encourage wider adoption of ConTeXt, even better. All best, Andrew Dunning

Alan BRASLAU

9:11 p.m.

My understanding of PDF/UA is a very valid requirement to make texts accessible through standard tools, in particular but not limited to users having visual deficiencies, for example. This is the reason, not hype, behind the US government pushing this standard. Alternative rendering (via web browsers, for example) will remain inferior for most uses as it will not benefit from much of what the TeX engine can produce, so this cannot really be the motivation. For reasons of Universal Accessibility, it would be a good idea for ConTeXt to indeed activate tagging by default. The argument of runtime and filesize (when proofing and in automatic workflows) is somewhat weak for one can ALWAYS deactivate this tagging for such cases. May I suggest that Hans reconsider his stand on this issue for the sake of promotion of ConTeXt as a very advanced typesetting tool. Alan On Mon, 19 Oct 2015 22:35:46 -0400 Andrew Dunning wrote:

...

...
On 19 Oct 2015, at 5:33 PM, Hans Hagen wrote:

Indeed context supports tagged pdf already for a while, although only acrobat can do something with it. Making it default is not really an option as there is overhead involved (a bit more runtime and much larger filesize) that makes no sense when proofing documents and in workflows for print, but enabling is easy with

\setuptagging[state=start]

Thank you! Would it also be possible to have something to the effect of `\setupbackend[format={pdf/ua:2014}` to set up the appropriate options?

...
Btw, this feature relates to export to XML. Personally I wonder why this UA is such a hype, probably because publishers are reluctant to embed the document source in the pdf, which make much more sense when alternative rendering is needed.

I agree that I would prefer to see PDFs given alongside good HTML, but the reality is that this will not happen for some time to come, and in the meantime PDFs remain inaccessible to anyone with a print disability (and inconvenient for the rest of us). If we can improve this situation, it is only right that we do so. If we can in the process encourage wider adoption of ConTeXt, even better.

All best,

Andrew Dunning

Hans Hagen

20 Oct 20 Oct

1:06 a.m.

On 10/20/2015 5:11 AM, Alan BRASLAU wrote:

...

My understanding of PDF/UA is a very valid requirement to make texts accessible through standard tools, in particular but not limited to users having visual deficiencies, for example. This is the reason, not hype, behind the US government pushing this standard.

Sure, I understand that, but from what I've seen as demos I'm far from convinced. If indeed that is the reason, then a better 'demand' would be to provide several versions of the pdf (if rendering i.e. placement on the page is important), for instance: b/w : for colorblind, large size fonts, less fancy layouts etc .. in fact that would be an easy requirement to meet. The strange thing is that this tagged pdf standard does not have provision to embed the whole source (in xml) and point to nodes, which would be much more interesting (but not for publishers of course). It just puzzles me why solutions for problems need to be complex. Or to put it otherwise: if I had a disability I would consider this solution a crappy poor mans one, not a real one.

...

Alternative rendering (via web browsers, for example) will remain inferior for most uses as it will not benefit from much of what the TeX engine can produce, so this cannot really be the motivation.

It depends, providing an html file alongside even if it looks worse is still better than some synthetic voice trying to make something of the semi-structured content. In fact, I can imagine serious documents to have proper audio embedded, done in a way that does justice to the problem. Anyway ... we do support it, but on your bsd system: what viewer do you use that supports it? We have tags for years and can't even test it properly (ok, that has been the same for more pdf stuff).

...

For reasons of Universal Accessibility, it would be a good idea for ConTeXt to indeed activate tagging by default. The argument of runtime and filesize (when proofing and in automatic workflows) is somewhat weak for one can ALWAYS deactivate this tagging for such cases. May I suggest that Hans reconsider his stand on this issue for the sake of promotion of ConTeXt as a very advanced typesetting tool.

our main own application of context is relative fast processing of complex xml document and tagging is adding a lot of overhead interesting is btw that pdf has all kind of compression and that has not always influenced its design in a positive way, but with tagging the file can become many times larger which is no fun (esp when one produces huge pdf's then need to go over the web) there are not many cases where in context we changed the default and it's generally a bad idea as then one needs to go over all workflows and en/disable things of course the user can easily enable it on his system: just drop a cont-loc.mkiv file in your texmf-local/tex/context/user path and enable it there Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | voip: 087 875 68 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------

Hans Hagen

1:12 a.m.

On 10/20/2015 4:35 AM, Andrew Dunning wrote:

...

...
On 19 Oct 2015, at 5:33 PM, Hans Hagen wrote:

Indeed context supports tagged pdf already for a while, although only acrobat can do something with it. Making it default is not really an option as there is overhead involved (a bit more runtime and much larger filesize) that makes no sense when proofing documents and in workflows for print, but enabling is easy with

\setuptagging[state=start]

Thank you! Would it also be possible to have something to the effect of `\setupbackend[format={pdf/ua:2014}` to set up the appropriate options?

you have to discuss that with Peter Rolf as he is the one who keeps an eye on all possible combinations of settings for pdf standards (and checks with validators)

...

...
Btw, this feature relates to export to XML. Personally I wonder why this UA is such a hype, probably because publishers are reluctant to embed the document source in the pdf, which make much more sense when alternative rendering is needed.

I agree that I would prefer to see PDFs given alongside good HTML, but the reality is that this will not happen for some time to come, and in the meantime PDFs remain inaccessible to anyone with a print disability (and inconvenient for the rest of us). If we can improve this situation, it is only right that we do so. If we can in the process encourage wider adoption of ConTeXt, even better.

an interesting side track would be a set of alternative styles that can be used: b/w, larger sizes, opendyslectic fonts, etc ... so, to kind of set a standard of producing several versions of one document Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | voip: 087 875 68 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------

Peter Rolf

7:26 a.m.

Am 20.10.2015 um 09:12 schrieb Hans Hagen:

...

On 10/20/2015 4:35 AM, Andrew Dunning wrote:

...
...
On 19 Oct 2015, at 5:33 PM, Hans Hagen wrote:

Indeed context supports tagged pdf already for a while, although only acrobat can do something with it. Making it default is not really an option as there is overhead involved (a bit more runtime and much larger filesize) that makes no sense when proofing documents and in workflows for print, but enabling is easy with

\setuptagging[state=start]

Thank you! Would it also be possible to have something to the effect of `\setupbackend[format={pdf/ua:2014}` to set up the appropriate options?

you have to discuss that with Peter Rolf as he is the one who keeps an eye on all possible combinations of settings for pdf standards (and checks with validators)

Will look into it (sorry, but I am kind of ignorant to new standards, that I don't use myself) :D I can only hope that the validator (@Luigi: thanks for the link) does a good job, as my ancient Acrobat Pro 9 doesn't know the standard. It will also take some time to gather the (free available) information, but I don't see a general problem now. I'll report back in a few days.

...

...
...
Btw, this feature relates to export to XML. Personally I wonder why this UA is such a hype, probably because publishers are reluctant to embed the document source in the pdf, which make much more sense when alternative rendering is needed.

I agree that I would prefer to see PDFs given alongside good HTML, but the reality is that this will not happen for some time to come, and in the meantime PDFs remain inaccessible to anyone with a print disability (and inconvenient for the rest of us). If we can improve this situation, it is only right that we do so. If we can in the process encourage wider adoption of ConTeXt, even better.

an interesting side track would be a set of alternative styles that can be used: b/w, larger sizes, opendyslectic fonts, etc ... so, to kind of set a standard of producing several versions of one document

Hans

----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | voip: 087 875 68 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------

Andrew Dunning

12:03 p.m.

...

On 20 Oct 2015, at 9:26 AM, Peter Rolf wrote:

Will look into it (sorry, but I am kind of ignorant to new standards, that I don't use myself) :D

That’s hugely appreciated; I am not much of a programmer, but let me know if there is anything I can do to help. All best, Andrew Dunning

Peter Rolf

3:32 p.m.

Am 20.10.2015 um 20:03 schrieb Andrew Dunning:

...

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On 20 Oct 2015, at 9:26 AM, Peter Rolf wrote:

Will look into it (sorry, but I am kind of ignorant to new standards, that I don't use myself) :D

That’s hugely appreciated; I am not much of a programmer, but let me know if there is anything I can do to help.

You are the first user of this feature, so your job will be to test it properly, once it's implemented. The programming work will exclusively be done by Hans. All I do is find out the formal definitions of the standard (needed XMP entries, supported PDF features, etc.). You and I do the boring part and he has all the fun ;-)

...

All best,

Andrew Dunning ___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________

Andrew Dunning

3:38 p.m.

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On 20 Oct 2015, at 5:32 PM, Peter Rolf wrote:

You are the first user of this feature, so your job will be to test it properly, once it's implemented. The programming work will exclusively be done by Hans. All I do is find out the formal definitions of the standard (needed XMP entries, supported PDF features, etc.). You and I do the boring part and he has all the fun ;-)

Brilliant; I have some friends who work for the Ontario School for the Blind, so that should be quite feasible. Thanks again! All best, Andrew

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Alan BRASLAU
Andrew Dunning
Hans Hagen
Peter Rolf