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Re: PDF will be legally accessible with the new 508

for

From: Monir ElRayes
Date: Mar 24, 2010 9:09AM

In addition to what Allen said, it is interesting to note that there are two
other factors that are often confused with whether a given document format
(e.g. pdf) is accessible:

1) Does the document format have internal infrastructure that supports
accessibility? PDF and HTML do for all known accessibility requirements
related to various document elements (e.g. images, tables, lists etc).
Interestingly MS Word - which many people view as inherently more accessible
than PDF- does not have sufficient internal infrastructure to support some
key elements (e.g. tables)

2) How difficult is it to make a given format accessible (i.e. to author it
correctly)? Much of the confusion about the accessibility of PDF is a result
of the fact that it is very hard for an average user to make a PDF document
accessible relying solely on the tools provided by Acrobat Pro or Standard,
not to mention the fact that many PDFs don't even originate in Acrobat.
Tools like CommonLook (for document remediation in Acrobat
http://www.net-centric.com/products/cl_s508_adobe.aspx ) and PAW (for
authoring accessible PDF from MS Word
http://www.net-centric.com/products/PAW.aspx ) can help overcome the
inherent difficulty in making PDF accessible.


Monir ElRayes
President
NetCentric Technologies