EU Accessibility Act (EAA) / BFSR BarrierefreiheitsGesetz - Generate PDF/UA from HTML

[Rollo62 581]

Hi there,

I’d like to ask if anyone here has experience working with A11y (accessibility):
https://www.bmas.de/DE/Service/Gesetze-und-Gesetzesvorhaben/barrierefreiheitsstaerkungsgesetz.html
https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/policies/justice-and-fundamental-rights/disability/union-equality-strategy-rights-persons-disabilities-2021-2030/european-accessibility-act_en
 

This also concerns PDF files, such as data sheets, catalogs, EU declarations of conformity, and so on.
PDFs are not accessible by default; there is PDF/UA for that, and PAC is a good testing tool.
https://pac.pdf-accessibility.org
 

I’m specifically facing the issue that I generate pages in HTML and then convert them to PDF.
However, the PDF/UA-relevant entries are often lost during this conversion.
 

Has anyone experienced similar problems with HTML-to-PDF conversion? Maybe there are good tips and/or tools for this process?

Yes, I could generate PDFs directly with Delphi, but that would require a complete overhaul in so many places that I’m hoping it can also work with HTML.

I’ve also cross-posted this in the DE-DelphiPraxis.
https://www.delphipraxis.net/217301-bfsr-barrierefreiheitsges-eu-accessibility-act-eaa-pdf-ua-aus-html-generieren.html#post1549264

Edited Friday at 11:59 AM by Rollo62

[Attila Kovacs 660]

I've just tested some documents my app generates, and they are all rated as Taygetos+.

Everything has to be compliant in just 3 weeks, great, thank you @Rollo62.

 

 

Edited Friday at 12:46 PM by Attila Kovacs

[Rollo62 581]

20 hours ago, Attila Kovacs said:

I've just tested some documents my app generates, and they are all rated as Taygetos+.

Everything has to be compliant in just 3 weeks, great, thank you @Rollo62.

Then see German DP, perhaps this is interesting for you too
 

Quote

The PDFix Lite also works after installation, is a QT project, and even seems to fix all problems automatically.
https://pdfix.net/pricing/
The desktop version is no longer free, but if the fix works properly it's probably worth the money.
I'm currently still checking what the output is like.

PDFix Lite can also break with some PDFs, but it produces much better results and can also fix very complex PDFs.
Unfortunately, I don't currently have the ultimate test tool, partly because I don't use Adobe products myself,
there is either something from Adobe or plugins.

 

Edited 17 hours ago by Rollo62

[Attila Kovacs 660]

Well, I really wouldn't like to add a post-processor behind it, it's basically impossible for it to work properly when, say, the company logo is made up of 40 paths and scribbles.

Besides, it can't modify a signed PDF anyway.

However, in my form designer, I can add accessibility semantics to the elements, like role, display name, language, etc. and with "gdicomment()", I can pass it to Gnostice, which I’ll expand with a processor and a structure-tree generator.

I think I’m going to miss the 3-week deadline, but I believe this is the only sensible solution.

 

[Rollo62 581]

Sure, but this may help a lot to find out whats possibly going wrong, this usual PDF readers shows no hint at all.
Something has to check the output PDF somehow.

[Attila Kovacs 660]

Well, it's not that complicated. Imagine, for example, that there's a logo in a document and a screen reader application needs to help someone understand what's on the screen. Without tags, the screen reader will start reading things like 'line, line, path, rectangle, etc.' But if you tag the group of shapes/lines as /S /Figure /T (Logo), then it simply reads 'Logo.' The same principle applies to pretty much everything else in the document.

 

Here is an example from the PAC you linked, after I added the /Figure tag using PDF-XChange:

 

Now, PDFix will try to tag everything, more or less quite well, but the tags won’t have names to be read, and the graphics won’t be grouped correctly, etc.

But I did not check PDFix for the details, maybe you can create templates for better results.

 

It's a pretty neat topic, it reminds me of the Lynx, the console text web browser for Linux back in the days.