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Re: PDF, Accessibility and Quality Control

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From: Robinson, Norman B - Washington, DC
Date: Jan 29, 2007 12:50PM

Melanie,

We have many different functional organizations creating
content. We are most likely to provide an accessible PDF if the original
document is maintained for updates and accessibility. Applying tags to
the PDF is a second-hand approach unless you expect the PDF to never be
updated and stored as the "original" document. Our policy is to always
provide and accessible text alternative along with the PDF
(http://www.usps.com/cpim/ftp/hand/as508a/508a_c6.html#508hdr59 and
specifically
http://www.usps.com/cpim/ftp/hand/as508a/508a_c6.html#508hdr79) which
I've found HTML to be the most consistently accessible.

Note that I've seen many business units create PDF versions of
anything they could normally print (e.g., Presentations, Documents,
Slides, Spreadsheets) because they think PDF is accessible and because
they (although they don't usually state this) want something that is
platform-neutral (will work on any computer or operating system) so
end-users won't generally bother them for a specific format.

I'm a little archaic in that I start with the premise that PDF's
primary purpose is for PRINTING. I keep that in mind when I challenge
individuals with why the business wants to make a PDF version of a
document. It is important to question why before we simply work on
making PDFs accessible, when the business process (e.g., document
management) is broken or non-existent. I'll get off my soap-box and wish
you the best of luck.

I hope that was useful in some way.

Regards,


Norman B. Robinson
Section 508 Coordinator
IT Governance, US Postal Service
phone: 202.268.8246