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Re: PDFs that read one word per line

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From: deblist@suberic.net
Date: Jan 26, 2010 8:18AM


On Tue, 26 Jan 2010, Andrew Kirkpatrick wrote:
> but perhaps others are saying that PDF is a magic format that compensates for author's neglect of accessibility. I'm happy to take suggestions.

Andrew,

This is undoubtedly happening. The United States government, for
example, has decided that putting things into PDF -- no matter
how they are formatted in PDF -- automatically makes them
accessible, and has put up many, many inaccessible PDF documents
labeled as accessible. Many American universities are under the
impression that PDF is automatically accessible. This is such a
widespread misconception that I'm not sure how Adobe could fight
it without pop-ups on PDF creation that say "this document is not
accessible by default. In order to add accessibility, you will
need to follow the steps documented elsewhere."

-Deborah