Trellis 1.23.0

The Claude switch now tells the truth

It only appears when it will work. Trellis can hand image descriptions and a reading-order check to Claude Code. Until now the switch for that showed on every Mac, whether Claude Code was there or not: a style rule was quietly overriding the code that hid it. On a Mac without Claude Code you could switch it on and get buttons that failed. It is now hidden unless Claude Code is installed and signed in.

It checks you are signed in, not just installed. The claude command in Terminal keeps its own sign-in, separate from the Claude desktop app, so plenty of Macs have Claude Code installed but signed out. Trellis used to find that out on your first press of Draft. It now asks Claude Code when it opens. If you are signed out, the first step says so, and once you have signed in from Terminal, a Check again button brings the switch up without a restart.

A run that stops part way keeps what it drafted. If Claude Code timed out or your sign-in lapsed halfway through a long deck, every description drafted so far was thrown away. They are now kept, and the reason it stopped is shown on screen next to the Draft button, not only announced to screen readers.

Smaller fixes

• What gets sent is now described accurately. A description request sends the image crop plus up to 600 characters of that page's text for context. The app used to say only the image was sent.
• The switch lasts until you quit, and now says so. It used to say "for this document", but it never reset when you opened another file.
• Focus comes back to the button you pressed after drafting descriptions or checking reading order, instead of dropping to the top of the page.
• An API key alone is no longer offered. The downloadable app works through Claude Code only. A key in the environment now gets a one-line explanation instead of a switch that would fail.

The install guide has setup steps for Claude Code and new troubleshooting rows. 454 automated checks pass (19 new for this release); the real-deck corpus checks were skipped on this build machine. Both attached guides pass veraPDF PDF/UA-1.

Installing

Download Trellis-1.23.0.zip, unzip, and drag Trellis to Applications, replacing the old copy. macOS blocks the first launch of a new download once, even as an update, because the app is not signed by a registered developer; the attached Installing Trellis guide shows how to clear it in System Settings. Apple silicon Macs. More at https://chriskeene.me/trellis

Trellis 1.22.0

PDF Tagger is now Trellis

Same app, new name. Trellis is an accessibility tagger for PDFs: it takes a PDF with no structure, works out what the structure probably is, and walks you through confirming it. Nothing about how it tags has changed.

A new icon to match: a trellis with something growing up it.

If you already use PDF Tagger:

• It installs as a new app. Download the zip below, drag Trellis to Applications, then move PDF Tagger to the Bin.
• Files you tagged with PDF Tagger are still recognised. They open in Trellis with your decisions intact, the same as before.
• macOS asks once on first launch, as it did for PDF Tagger, because to macOS this is a new app. The attached Installing Trellis guide shows how to clear it in System Settings.
• The log has moved to ~/Library/Logs/Trellis.log.

Nothing else needs moving: the app keeps no settings between launches.

Also

Recognising its own files got stricter. The app used to treat any file whose metadata mentioned its name as its own work, so a document merely titled after it counted. It now reads only the tool name it writes into a tagged file, and accepts both the old name and the new one.

The guides are renamed to match, and say what the old app was called. The install guide now has an "Upgrading from PDF Tagger" panel, and the download and test figures in both guides are re-measured for this build.

435 automated checks pass, 450 with the native window checks; the real-deck corpus checks were skipped on this build machine. Both attached guides pass veraPDF PDF/UA-1.

Installing

Download Trellis-1.22.0.zip, unzip, and drag Trellis to Applications. macOS blocks the first launch once; the attached Installing Trellis guide shows how to clear it in System Settings. Apple silicon Macs. More at https://chriskeene.me/trellis

PDF Tagger 1.21.0

A typeface built for reading

PDF Tagger now uses Atkinson Hyperlegible Next, the Braille Institute's typeface designed for low-vision legibility, in the app and in both guides. It matches chriskeene.me.

It now looks the same on every Mac. The app used to name its font and rely on it being installed, which it only was on the machine that built it, so everyone else saw the system font. The font now travels inside the app.

Both guides are rebuilt in it, with one embedded face per weight, and are still PDF/UA conformant. The new font has no arrow glyph, so the few places that drew one now say "then" or "to" instead of letting a substitute symbol font into the PDF.

Also

The test suite now checks that the window carries its own font, that each guide embeds a static face for every weight it uses, and that every character a guide draws exists in that font.

421 automated checks pass; the real-deck corpus checks were skipped on this build machine. Both attached guides pass veraPDF PDF/UA-1.

Installing

Download the zip, unzip, and drag PDF Tagger to Applications. macOS blocks the first launch once; the attached Installing PDF Tagger guide shows how to clear it in System Settings. Apple silicon Macs. More at https://chriskeene.me/pdf-tagger

PDF Tagger 1.20.0

The Claude switch moved, and got better at its job

It is a switch in the top right now, next to Help tips, rather than a panel buried in the Images step. It stays hidden unless a route to Claude is actually available, so it never offers something that would fail the moment you used it.

It tells you it is working. Drafting a dozen descriptions is one request that can take minutes. The app now reports progress as it goes: a real bar, and "4 of 13 done, page 6".

It knows a logo from a word. The old prompt asked for two things at once: name the organisation if it is a logo, and include the words if the image is text. A wordmark is both, and the words won. Given a company name set as a graphic with a strapline under it, it used to answer NORTHWIND, tagline "Accessibility, built in from the start". It now answers Northwind logo.

It has a proper go at deciding whether an image is decorative at all, and tells you why it decided that, which is the judgement people find most tedious. As always it is a draft: nothing is accepted for you, and an unread draft still counts as outstanding.

Also

Both header toggles were white-on-navy, left over from when the bar was dark. On the current white header the "off" state was white text on white, a control you could only find by tabbing onto it. Fixed, and measured.

472 automated checks pass. Both attached guides are regenerated and still PDF/UA conformant.

Installing

Download the zip, unzip, drag PDF Tagger to Applications, then right-click the app and choose Open the first time. Apple silicon Macs. More at https://chriskeene.me/pdf-tagger

PDF Tagger 1.19.0

A Mac app that builds the accessibility structure into a PDF that was exported without any, and asks you about the parts that are genuinely a judgement call.

Installing

1. Download PDF-Tagger-1.19.0.zip and unzip it.
2. Drag PDF Tagger into Applications.
3. First launch only: right-click the app and choose Open, then Open again. Double-clicking will be refused, because the app is not signed with a paid Apple developer certificate.

Apple silicon Macs. The download is around 89 MB because it carries veraPDF and a trimmed Java runtime, so you get a real PDF/UA-1 verdict without installing anything else.

What it does

Headings at contiguous levels, lists, tables (including borderless ones) with header cells scoped to their row or column, figures with alt text you write or mark decorative, links, form fields, and a reading order you can see and drag into place. It checks its own output against all 106 PDF/UA-1 rules, and it never touches your pixels.

Optionally, if you have Claude Code or an Anthropic API key, it can draft alt text and give the reading order a second look. That is off unless you switch it on, everything comes back as a draft for you to approve, and the app works fine without it.

Caveats

A personal project and a work in progress. It proposes and you decide, so review the output before you send it anywhere. And tagging cannot rescue a document that was hard to read in the first place: if it can live as a web page, it should.

Two guides are attached, both of them tagged. There is more detail at https://chriskeene.me/pdf-tagger