Note by @fastfinge

skze @skye@toot.cat

5mo

Hey blind people, what is the recommended accessible format for distributing text-only content? So that a short text of a couple hundred words is browsable, searchable and the structure is understandable?

Am I correct is assuming that a well-structured PDF with all the titles set correctly would do the trick? Or is there some secret file format that is much better suited?

The document is intended to be distributed as downloadable file, not as a website.

(Sighted people feel free to boost but for the love of everything please do not try to answer)

Edit: So what I have gathered
PDF actually a terrible option
HTML good, but not easily downloadable
Epub probably good, and easily downloadable
Markdown might be preferred for people that know how to work with them
Why the fuck is this still so difficult in the year 2026

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca

5mo

@skye Properly tagged PDFs can work, but depending on how the PDF is generated, getting the tagging done correctly can be anything from slightly tricky to impossible. But if you go with epub, it's pretty much the same as generating accessible HTML. A lot easier.

skze @skye@toot.cat

5mo

@fastfinge Thank you!

James Scholes @jscholes@dragonscave.space

5mo

@fastfinge @skye I try not to be dogmatic about much in accessibility. But one hill I will proudly die on every time is that there is no such thing as a universally accessible PDF.

You can get the tags right, test with users, spend 12 thousand dollars on it being professionally evaluated and remediated...

And then I'll open it on my phone, or in Chrome, or in Firefox, or in basically anything that isn't Acrobat and it will go wrong.

Maybe just a little bit, with a paragraph being incorrectly spread across multiple lines. Maybe a lot, with all of your expensive and careful tagging being completely discarded.

You don't know what will happen, I don't know what will happen. given that one of the only real selling points of PDF is that it will retain and faithfully reproduce visual layout and formatting, the fact that not even the tiniest bit of accessibility consistency exists makes it a rotten ecosystem.

James Scholes @jscholes@dragonscave.space

5mo

@fastfinge @skye And yes, I know lots of people have put lots of effort into PDF accessibility, both at the big tech and open source levels. My aim is not to dismiss that, but rather to acknowledge how practically bad things still are.

Mozilla, for instance, have probably come closest to creating a PDF parser -> renderer pipeline that respects accessibility tags and isn't made by Adobe. But even Firefox breaks single runs of text across screen reader cursor lines, sometimes with as little as one character each making text hard or impossible to follow.

On iOS, meanwhile, I can't reliably use VoiceOver's explore by touch in a PDF rendered by Apple's own software, which also occasionally turns individual letters or random bits of words into their own swipe targets while stripping Whitespace.

The various apps made specifically for blind readers with PDF support? I don't even trust them to accurately extract all the text, let alone present the tagging and formatting correctly.

James Scholes @jscholes@dragonscave.space

5mo

@fastfinge @skye Invariably, someone will read posts like this and think—maybe even post—PDF's not all that bad. They read a set restaurant menu on their phone just the other day!

What I say to that is: good, I'm glad they could do that. But also, they can't even independently be sure that they actually did read the full menu.

Still, that's two pages of relatively low stakes text. It's not a 265-page legal document which even Acrobat's accessibility layer took seven minutes to render and then caused the software to crash upon navigating to the first footnote.

And now I think I'm done. Thank you for reading.

clv1 has moved @clv1@mastodon.social

5mo

@jscholes @fastfinge @skye I agree with the PDF considerations here. I vote for HTML or EPub.

Philip Kiff @pkiff@mastodon.social

5mo

@fastfinge @skye It's hard to disagree with the criticisms of the PDF format from @jscholes.

The PDF format is technically complex and prone to errors. And the format is getting MORE complex and demanding as it evolves, rather than less (see the PDF 2.0 and the PDF/UA-2 standards).

As someone working in the field, I wouldn't defend the format. Though I do think that PDFs are not going anywhere, despite literally decades now of folks trying to persuade everyone to move to HTML or ePub!

Mossy Rock @falcon14@mstdn.social

5mo

@pkiff @fastfinge @skye @jscholes Acrobat has become so difficult to use, it's my choice of last resort at this point. Adobe crashes constantly, I'll fix the tags, reading order, bounding boxes, only to have it not work in NVDA or pass in PAC. State & local government needs to be WCAG-compliant soon...folks have no idea what they are doing. They think running the program's built-in accessibility checker solves the whole problem.

NatalyaD @NatalyaD@disabled.social

5mo

@jscholes @fastfinge @skye

Yep, been there, done that with PDF. In 2011 was my only option with a (dodgy) copy of Acrobat as my only work resource. As soon as I got an HTML option I shifted my carefully designed work over + reviewed it, with great success.

I am now in a new uni workplace and working to un-PDF our main disability document (and everything else). I'd like HTML as main with EPUB and PDF for documents one would want to save locally as a document. Long game tho.

Martin @mcourcel@allovertheplace.ca

5mo

@jscholes @fastfinge @skye Yup, had a similar conversation with a colleague this week. But Martin, the tags are all correct and PAC says it's fine. Yes, and Martin is telling you that the bullets are on their own line and some sentences are split into one word per line. It's crap!

Keri Svendsen @sapphireangel@mastodon.online

5mo

@johann @fastfinge @skye @jscholes I'm trying to get my company to stop using PDFs but they refuse. ugg