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Re: Which Acrobat versions for creating accessible PDF's

for

From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Jan 31, 2011 11:03AM

I don't have a list that is any better than the one on the site (which once had text underlying the dots used to indicate a feature, will forward your comment to the web team).

In general I usually break down the versions in a way similar to what you did:

Standard allows authors to create tagged PDF documents with the PDFMaker tool for MS-Office and from web pages, but does not allow authors edit the tags.

Pro allows both the creation and editing of tags. Authors can repair the accessibility of an inaccessible PDF file.

I'll also add that as with many aspects of PDF files that may need repair, a document that is authored correctly will not require that the reading order be adjusted. For example, an author using Word that creates columns in a document using Word's column feature will find that the reading order is correct in the PDF that is saved from that document. If the author instead uses text boxes to create columns then repair is more likely to be needed.


Thanks,
AWK

Andrew Kirkpatrick
Group Product Manager, Accessibility
Adobe Systems

<EMAIL REMOVED>
http://twitter.com/awkawk
http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility


-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Terrill Thompson
Sent: Monday, January 31, 2011 12:36 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List ( <EMAIL REMOVED> )
Subject: [WebAIM] Which Acrobat versions for creating accessible PDF's

Hi All,

In looking at the Adobe Acrobat Family Production Comparison page:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/matrix.html

That page provides some general (though inaccessible) information about which Acrobat version is required for accessible authoring, and there's a bit more detail provided in the detailed comparison (an untagged PDF linked from the main page). According to these docs...

Features that are available in Acrobat X Standard:
- Make PDF documents more accessible by adding tags to control reading order, and improve navigation is available in Standard
- Scan paper documents into PDF and automatically recognize text with improved optical character recognition (OCR)

Features that require Acrobat X Pro:
- Validate accessible PDF documents and check for possible accessibility problems
- Provide a reading order for pages or columns of text requires Pro

Has anyone created a more specific, comprehensive list of which accessibility features are available in the various flavors of Acrobat? I have the Pro version, but I've gotten fuzzy on how many of the features available to me are also available to people running Standard.

Thanks,

Terrill Thompson
Technology Accessibility Specialist
DO-IT, UW Accessible Technology
UW Information Technology
University of Washington
<EMAIL REMOVED> | 206/221-4168