700 PDFs need alt tags for 508 Compliance--HELP!

[krustwell]

this got dropped in my lap a few minutes ago:

we have 700 PDFs that didn't cut the customer's mustard in terms of 508 Compliance. basically, all images found in the PDFs need to have alternate text associated with them. this way, blind users can utilize screen readers that will pick up the alt text tag and read to them whatever description was put in there.

for the purposes of the 700 documents, our customer would be happy to have each image's alt tag say the same thing ("For more information on this graphic, contact Joe Blow..."). so it becomes a giant batch process.

i need to find a solution that will scan every PDF in a directory and insert the specified alt text tag every time it finds an image.

sorry if this isn't clear. i'm typing fast b/c we needed this 6 months ago and i've been told we have to do something immediately. i'm having a hard time finding any PDF plugins or apps that look anything like what i need.

help! and thanks so much in advance.

sincerely,

g.l. updyke

 

[GordonIt]

Don't know if this help, but

There is a few library out there to read and rewrite PDF
no really good freeware lib, you better thing about spending few bucks to avoid loosing them in lengthy process

http://www.pdftron.com/index.html

http://www.activepdf.com/products/serverproducts/Toolkit/index.cfm

Also look at pdfzone.com

I would like also to mention that starting with acrobat 6 there is rather powerful capability in Adobe Acrobat it now support javascript within it, with a lot of dedicated API to do a lot of things.
This allow open a doc, do something in it, saving it.
I also suspect that it would allow to do a robot to process it. Something like designing the JS doing your work and action is manually launched but submiting a list of PDF file to processe, and 'voila'.

Docs is on Adobe Web site. ADSN

Acrobat JavaScript Guide.pdf
Acrobat Javascript Scripting.pdf
Acrobat Javascript testdebugger7.zip

Guess what ... they are in PDF ;-)

Tell me how you did solve your issue, I am curious about that
Good luck

 

[krustwell]

thanks for the quick reply. we are looking into the PDFTron and activePDF solutions, as well as one from Acrobat called LiveCycle PDF Generator. anyone know anything about that? the good folks at Adobe haven't called us back yet.

http://www.adobe.com/products/server/pdfgenerator/overview.html

we also have a guy who is looking at it from an SDK perspective. worst case scenario, we get a group of people to manually edit all 700. yick.

thanks again and more suggestions welcome!