TITLES/FOOTNOTES in Accessible PDF

[RandyHerbison]

Hello,

We have multi-page reports with titles and footnotes that repeat on each page. The screen reader NVDA reads the titles and footnotes for each page.  Is there a way to change the accessibility tags, for the titles and footnotes after the 1st page, into artifacts?  Our accessibility experts tell us they should be artifacts so that screen readers do not repeat them after the 1st page.

Thanks

[Cynthia_sas]

Hi:
I'd recommend working with Tech Support on this question. PDF is a proprietary format. This paper https://support.sas.com/resources/papers/proceedings17/SAS0483-2017.pdf shows how to turn on the accessible option, which it sounds like you are already doing. It looks like you can specify a particular style element with the Report Writing Interface. But for changing the accessible tags for different pages on the SAME title and footnotes for one procedure, I am not sure how you would do that. That's why I recommend Tech Support.
Cynthia

[RandyHerbison]

Thanks, Greg. Glad to learn SAS is working on it. Thanks for the workaround.

[RandyHerbison]

Thanks, Cynthia. I'll try Tech Support. Have worked with them on other accessibility issues. Always very helpful.

[gdkraus]

Right now there is no way to do that. It is an issue we are tracking in our system and we hope to include this fix in a future release. The workaround I have done is to include the TITLE or FOOTNOTE on the first page only, then I created a new style for subsequent pages that uses a background image on each page, and that image contains the text I want to appear in the header and footer on those pages. Since the image is a background image for the page, it automatically gets artifacted.

You can see this in action in https://support.sas.com/accessibility/ods/shoes-report.sas starting at line 148.

/* Customizations for portrait layout */
proc template;
	define style myPearlPortrait;
		parent=myPearl;
		class body from document /
			background=_undef_
			backgroundimage="&path.assets/companyConfidential_portrait.jpg";
	end;
run;

/* Customizations for landscape layout */
proc template;
	define style myPearlLandscape;
		parent=myPearl;
		class body from document /
			background=_undef_
			backgroundimage="&path.assets/companyConfidential_landscape.jpg";
	end;
run;

I've attached the images I used in both cases. This is the end result.

[RandyHerbison]

I noticed your workaround uses the NUMBER option to generate page numbers, and SAS doesn't create a tag for them.  That led my colleague Kristin and me to try customizing page number style attributes to create what looks like a footnote without the tag created for an actual footnote.

It meets our visual requirements, but does it comply with WCAG/Section 508 requirements?  CommonLook PDF Validator generates a warning "Page 1 does not contain header Artifacts".

Thanks

[gdkraus]

That's a pretty clever trick! I believe the message CommonLook is giving you is a warning and not an error about the document. I think it is coming from the requirement for WCAG 3.2, which is about providing consistent navigation. For WCAG 3.2 there are two "Advisory Techniques" that relate to PDFs, headers, and pagination. Advisory Techniques are usually treated as recommendations or best practices and not as requirements for conformance, however, you should consult with your compliance official for what requirements you must meet.