WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

Newsletter Archives - August 2005

Note

This newsletter is maintained here for archival purposes. The content presented here may be outdated, may contain out-of-date links, and may not represent current best practices or represent the opinion and recommendations of WebAIM. For up-to-date information, please refer to the WebAIM web site.

Featured Article

Adobe Acrobat PDF
by Jon Whiting of WebAIM

In the past, Adobe PDF files were completely inaccessible, especially to people using screen readers. This began to change with Acrobat 5, when Adobe introduced a series of "tags" that could be used to enhance PDF accessibility. Although PDF tags could not be manipulated as easily as HTML tags, they made the content more accessible to some users with screen readers. With each version of Adobe Acrobat, PDF accessibility has increased and it has become easier to create tagged PDF files.

This article will discuss how to view, edit and create tagged PDF files. We will also show how to configure Adobe Reader 7 for accessibility. This is an excerpt from the WebAIM Web Accessibility Suite.

Read the full article: Adobe Acrobat PDF

On Target Tip

Label Positioning
by Gez Lemon, www.juicystudio.com

Correctly labeled form controls ensure that your forms are usable to the widest possible audience. Explicitly labeling form controls is beneficial for people using assistive technology, and correctly positioning form prompts can benefit visitors with mobility and cognitive difficulties.

On Target Resources

The Voice of the Web
By Carin Lennartsson, ReadSpeaker

One solution to help people with literacy problems is to provide a read-back facility on websites. Technology is developing rapidly in this area and a variety of products are available. One such solution, ReadSpeaker, does not require the user to download any software or plug-ins but can be accessed everywhere.

The Microsoft Internet Explorer Weblog

Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1 was recently released. IE developers report they will be working with the Web Standards Project to make Beta 2 standards compliant. See what others are saying and add your own comments to the IEBlog.

Color Contrast
by James Siddall JR

This article challenges the W3C algorithm for color contrast. The author hopes this is a first step towards improving the current algorithm, or at least towards reaching a better understanding of it.

WebAIM Discussion Forum

Subscribe to the WebAIM discussion forum

View the WebAIM discussion forum archives

Selected recent threads