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Re: PDFs that read one word per line

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From: Monir ElRayes
Date: Jan 28, 2010 4:15AM

On 28 Jan 2010, at 5:30 AM, Mark Magennis wrote:

> Correctly structured and fully tagged PDFs are typically NOT as accessible
as an equivalent HTML
> document.

This is because in most cases these PDFs are not truly properly structured.
The problem is simply this: Making PDF accessible is much harder to do
manually (i.e. using just Acrobat) than HTML. Hence the large number of
non-accessible PDFs out there. This is due to the fact that PDF is
inherently a much more complex format than HTML. People confuse this with
the PDF format not being capable of providing the same level of support for
accessibility as HTML. Using the right tools, PDF files, including those
containing complex data tables, can be read correctly using Screen Readers
and the Read Out Loud feature of Acrobat.

My company develops software tools for HTML and PDF accessibility and I can
tell you that our experience, based on remediating tens of thousands of
PDFs, is that PDF can be made as accessible to end users as HTML when the
right tools are used. Granted that most PDFs out there are not accessible
and there is lots of confusion and frustration due to the difficulty of the
task (when done manually).

Cheers,
Monir