WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: PDFs that read one word per line

for

From: John E. Brandt
Date: Jan 26, 2010 8:21AM

Well put, Mike. I'd "retweet" this if I could.

Yours is essentially the same advice I am, and have been, giving Maine State
government. We've also provided them with a series of articles that went
into a newsletter by the Office of Information Technology. But it needs to
be a strategy of policy as well as training to be successful. Supervisors
must demand that all documents be accessible.

~j

John E. Brandt
jebswebs.com
Augusta, ME USA
<EMAIL REMOVED>
www.jebswebs.com

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Moore,Michael
(DARS)
Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2010 9:30 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] PDFs that read one word per line

Hi Geof

Believe me we feel your pain. The vast majority of PDFs are created with no
regard for accessibility. And there is a huge misconception that all PDFs
are accessible. Thus there is an attitude among many users that all I need
to do to post an accessible version of any document is convert it to PDF.
Add to that the number of automated, database driven reporting tools that
publish to a totally inaccessible PDF format and you have a situation that
has led many of my friends who use screen readers to add the letter "U" to
the end of the PDF acronym.

Adobe is not wholly responsible for this mess. They don't create the
reporting tools, and they are not responsible for teaching folks to use
their document creation and PDF conversion tools properly. They don't even
make all of the tools that create PDFs from Office documents. The do promote
PDF as an accessible format though, and unfortunately their success has made
the Adobe name synonymous with PDF in the eyes of the general public.

We are taking a holistic approach to the problem. First we provide training
to people in how to use their MS Office tools properly to create well
structured documents. Next we teach them how to use those well structured
documents to create accessible PDFs, and HTML documents and how to make
judgments about which format is appropriate for the intended audience. We
encourage document authors to make materials available in multiple formats
to meet the needs of a variety of users. Once people see how easy it is to
create documents that are accessible in their native format, and then easily
convert them to accessible PDF and HTML then we have a community that is
creating a document library that is easier to use and to maintain. That's
our theory anyway, ask me again in about a year how well we are doing.

As for the automated reporting tools... we test, we report, and we try to
influence the manufacturers of the tools to do a better job.

Mike Moore

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Geof Collis
Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2010 8:07 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] PDFs that read one word per line

Hi All

Further to this post, why am I having such trouble with these pdf
documents even though I have the latest Adobe Reader and JAWS 10, I
keep getting documents like this that I cannot navigate, I hear open
parent document" and I hit enter and all I hear is "1 or some other
number, even though I was able to read the document from the
beginning. I'm never sure if I have read the whole document.

In a previous document I hit tab and it opened some part of the
document but this one didn't, I'm finding no consistency in pdf's
lately other than they are not very accessible.

cheers

Geof