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Re: PDFs that read one word per line

for

From: Geoff Freed
Date: Jan 28, 2010 6:21AM


Steve Jacobson posted a good summary of OpenOffice's accessibility pros and cons at http://www.nfbnet.org/pipermail/nfbcs_nfbnet.org/2009-May/005119.html . As a tool to produce accessible PDFs, I think OpenOffice is excellent. Its accessibility as an application (on both Mac and Windows) is reasonable but not without faults, however; whether it's better or worse than Word will be up to you to decide. Give it a try and let us know what you think.

Geoff/NCAM



On 1/28/10 5:23 AM, " <EMAIL REMOVED> " < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

How accessible is Open Office for Screen readers? I was under the impression
that there were significant accdessibility problems and therefore did not
try to use it.
Chuck
----- Original Message -----
From: "Geoff Freed" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
To: "WebAIM Discussion List" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Sent: Wednesday, January 27, 2010 6:13 PM
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] PDFs that read one word per line


>
> One further point about creating properly structured source documents
> using a word processor: use OpenOffice rather than Word. It overcomes
> the biggest obstacles with using Word to create PDF sources:
>
> 1. It works on both Mac and Windows
> 2. You can add alt to images on Mac (and Windows, of course), saving the
> time of doing it in Acrobat
> 3. You can completely tag data tables, saving the time of finishing them
> in Acrobat
> 4. The tags are always accurate
> 5. There are no plug-ins or add-ons to download
>
> Point #2 alone is worth the brief time it takes to download and install
> the software. It's also free: http://www.openoffice.org/ . I stopped
> using Word --> PDF over a year ago and have had few, if any problems.
>
> Geoff Freed
> WGBH/NCAM
>
>
>
>