How to make the document web accessible

Guidelines for accessible documents

Updated October 25, 2023

1. The document needs to have PNGs for figures instead of EPS files, because PNGs are images and EPSs are written in a vector language which is rendered on-the-fly by the PDF rendering engine and therefore every axis label and tick mark label is an object which would be read by the automatic reader which is undesirable. This is set in the 000-launcher.rmd file, in the YAML options, as the fig_filetype tag.

2. All tables must be able to be Autotagged or have the Reading Order->Table process applied to them within Adobe Acrobat DC Pro. This does not make completely correctly tagged tables but it is very close and as good as we can do with the automation. The last steps of fixing individual tables may still have to be performed. For example, table captions will be left as <P> tags outside the table. They should be changed to <Caption> tags and dragged inside the table tag structure.

3. Alternative text for figures has been implemented. Each knitr chunk which plots a figure must have an associated ref tag. For example if the following chunk plots a figure:

   ```{r chunk-name}
     plot_some_figure()
   ```
   

   A tag with the following format is necessary for the alternative text to be injected into the PDF document:

   (ref:chunk-name-alt) Alternative text goes here and can be multiple lines Normally this would appear before the chunk, along with the figure caption:

   (ref:chunk-name-cap) Figure caption text goes here and can be multiple lines
   (ref:chunk-name-alt) Alternative text goes here and can be multiple lines
   
   ```{r chunk-name}
     plot_some_figure()
   ```
   

Improving table tagging in Adobe Acrobat DC Pro

• Some but not all of the tables will be tagged correctly by Autotagging, the rest will have to be done one by one using the Reading Order->Table method. In that case, make sure to select the whole table, including the header and footer lines.
• LaTeX wrappers such as \mlc{}, \textbf{}, and emph{} are allowed.
• The add.to.row argument of xtable::xtable() to place extra headers and horizontal lines in tables is allowed.
• Greek symbols are allowed.
• Dashes in between values must have a space on each side (Example: 123,432 - 434,857).
• If there is a phrase followed by values in parentheses, the following rules must be followed (Example: Lognormal(2.1,1.31)):
  • There must be a space before the leading (.
  • There must be a space between the values, after the comma.
  • The example should look like this: Lognormal (2.1, 1.31).
• There cannot be more than one decimal point in a value, like there is in a software version (Example: SS ver 3.30.10.11)
  • Instead use SS ver 3-30-10-11.