How do you create an accessible PDF report with BIRT?

jstockton

I am evaluating BIRT to see if it can generate accessible PDFs for reports. To test this I've created a simple report in both the free Eclipse tool and an evaluation copy of the commercial Designer. Aside from adding alt text to charts and controlling the source order of my reports I have not found a way to create reports that utilize PDF tags so that my report appears as a structured document to a screen reader.<br />
<br />
I did do some searching and found an Actuate white paper from 2007 on <a class='bbc_url' href='http://www.actuate.com/download/whitepapers/section508-compliance-whitepaper.pdf'>Achieving Information Accessibility</a>, but it states that at the time PDFs were not a viable format for screen readers. Now that every modern screen reader supports PDFs, have there been any steps to add better support for screen readers to BIRT's PDF reports? If so, how do you do it?<br />
<br />
- Justin

johnw

The BIRT PDF Emitter uses iText. I haven't heard of any changes to the PDF emitter for accessibility, however that is not to say it could not be done. However, according to iText in Action (15.2), you can create accessibility tags. You would need to modify the PDF Emitter to add in iTexts tags.

This would be an excellent candidate for the Getting Started with BIRT Plugin Contest #2. Theres an IPad3 in it for you