Summary

The accessibility features available in the Expere Engine and Expere Authoring Tools are designed to enable implementation of customer-specific guidelines for producing PDF documents as tagged PDF documents from an accessibility perspective.

The accessibility features are available in two scenarios:

Authoring and Testing (Requirements Editor and Expere Testing System)
Document Generation (Expere Engine)

Note: All of the features described in this guide are implemented directly in the Requirements Editor or in the Expere Engine through the Expere API. There is no system configuration required nor are any features controlled or managed through configuration files.

Authoring and Testing

When authoring content and generating outputs for testing purposes in the Requirements Editor and Expere Testing System, you can use the Tagged PDF rendering option to generate sample outputs and previews as Tagged PDFs using the Assembly > Execute Document menu and Preview feature. These outputs can then be tested using a third-party screen reader applications to verify readability and performance.

The Requirements Editor allows authoring of specific content features that are embedded in the PDF output and used by assistive technologies such as screen reader applications. Using the Requirements Editor, you can also author content for accessibility and generate sample documents in the tagged PDF format.

The Expere Testing System also offers the option to generate a tagged PDF output that can be used to render PDF outputs as samples for testing.

See the section, Meeting Requirements for Accessibility, for more information about the available accessibility features.

Document Generation

Once content is authored, tested and approved in the Expere Authoring Tools as meeting your criteria for accessibility, you may then enable the Expere Engine to generate tagged PDF documents that include accessibility features used by screen reading software. Production-ready content is available for assembly and generation by the Expere Engine through the Expere Web services (Expere API).

The Expere Engine assembles documents tagged for rendering as Tagged PDF documents based on a parameter included on any of the various operations submitted to generate a document. When the Tagged PDF rendering option is submitted on a request message in the Expere API, the output generates as a tagged PDF and includes the accessibility features used by assistive technologies.

See the section, Generating Production Documents as Tagged PDFs, for details on how to identify documents for Tagged PDF assembly in the Expere Engine API.