The New Accessibility Tools Didn't Work

[lb_lee]

User tests show that the new alt-text functionality in LibreOffice 7 doesn't work. No clue why; it is super unstable in other ways as well.

Looks like I'm going back to the old version and doing the text-only versions manually again. Blah. Sorry for the delays, folks! I was really hopeful for a bit there, but I have yet to find a way to embed alt-text in a Word or LibreOffice document and have it export to PDF or EPUB correctly.

EDIT: Old-fashioned manual PDFs and EPUBs of Multi, Orgasmic and Madgic: a sanity and sorcery zine, have now been uploaded.

Comments

[erinptah]

Oof. Ever tried any of the programs that are more natively designed for PDFs? Scribus is good freeware, and Adobe unlocked the CS2 versions of their programs a while back, so you can get a copy of early InDesign.

[lb_lee]

I have the old InDesign, but no lie, it barely runs and regularly malfunctions. It also can't export to EPUB, which is one of the most accessible formats. With straight comics, that's no big deal, but I have to manually make a text-only script for those anyway, so it's irrelevant. This is only an issue for my illustrated zines, which are mostly prose but filled with enough images that having no alt-text opens lurchy holes in the narrative.

I have never tried Scribus. Have you used it?

[erinptah]

I've used Scribus, and in terms of functions it was on par with InDesign. Honestly, I was all set to switch over because ID was buggy for *me*...but then I got a new faster computer and ID has been smooth sailing ever since, so it didn't seem worth the effort to rebuild all my templates.

Admittedly, never tried to export an EPUB with it! But the internet says Scribus can do it, just needs an extra plugin.