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Re: PDF will be legally accessible with the new 508

for

From: Monir ElRayes
Date: Mar 24, 2010 6:03PM


I don't think accessibility of document formats has to do with a particular
screen reader. Note that there are many screen readers out there and they
have to work according to accessibility standards such as S508 (if they
don't then it is a problem with the screen reader rather than with the
standard). Standards are screen reader-independent (as they should) and they
deal with other disabilities in addition to vision impairment. Hence the
importance of making sure documents are accessible based on a given standard
(such as S508) rather than a given screen reader (which may or may not
provide an accurate implementation of the standard)

Best Regards,

Monir ElRayes
President
NetCentric Technologies
-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Don Mauck
Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2010 2:40 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] PDF will be legally accessible with the new 508

I'd disagree with that, it depends on the screen reader.

-----Original Message-----
From: Monir ElRayes [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2010 7:09 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] PDF will be legally accessible with the new 508

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

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Hoffman, Allen
Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2010 2:31 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] PDF will be legally accessible with the new 508

Can someone point to the part of the refresh of the Section 508
standards that would say "PDF is accessible"?

In my view, content in PDF format can be accessible if authored
correctly.


-----Original Message-----
From: Karlen Communications [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: Monday, March 22, 2010 6:53 AM
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List'
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] PDF will be legally accessible with the new 508

Ironically there is a company called JAWS that has had PDF creation
software
for years.
http://www.jawspdf.com/

They didn't used to be interested in accessibility but I haven't checked
them out recently.

I don't see anything about accessibility on their site.

I found them by accident in the early days of a GUI Internet when
looking
for screen reader information. :-)

Cheers, Karen


-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Christophe
Strobbe
Sent: March-22-10 6:31 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] PDF will be legally accessible with the new 508


At 05:37 20/03/2010, John Foliot wrote:
>(...)
>We know that there are legacy PDF's out there that will not be
accessible,
>and likely a few still being created today that are not as rich as
>Acrobat/Live Design could produce. We can only blame that on history
and
>poor training though, right? Is this a problem with "PDF" or of poor
>authoring practice and the early history of PDF? (...)

There is still a lot of work to be done to improve authoring
practices. I am involved in several projects funded by the European
Commission that had to rework deliverables because the PDF files were
not accessible or not tagged. I had to teach people how to use
Heading styles in MS Word and how to generate tagged PDF from
OpenOffice.org - even more than a year after the start of these
projects. These projects, as all the work I do, focus on
accessibility for people with disabilities. There is a cruel irony in
this.

Lesson learnt: provide tutorials about accessibile authoring
practices at the start of such projects.


>Interesting note about cheap alternatives that generate pseudo-PDFs
that
>lack access features. Are you aware of any examples that I could see?
It
>would be interesting to see what if anything they do produce - perhaps
we
>should go after those software companies instead - I wonder aloud if
ISO
>could modify the once proprietary but now open PDF standard to place a
>stronger insistence on accessibility to be called "PDF" (worth asking,
>no?). If bad software tools (versus a file format) is the culprit, we
>should point that out with proof, and attack the real problem. Most
large
>organizations that I know of, the majority will not buy faulty tools if
>they can avoid it, so the market place can be our friend if we are
smart
>about it.

John, are you looking for overviews like the following?
* JISC TechDIS: "Coparison of Free PDF Software" (no date)
<http://www.techdis.ac.uk/index.php?p=3_20_2_2>;
* "Accessibility testing 14 PDF creation tools" (12 September 2009):

<http://www.pws-ltd.com/sections/articles/2009/pdf_conversion_tools.html
>.


Best regards,

Christophe Strobbe



--
Christophe Strobbe
K.U.Leuven - Dept. of Electrical Engineering - SCD
Research Group on Document Architectures
Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 bus 2442
B-3001 Leuven-Heverlee
BELGIUM
tel: +32 16 32 85 51
http://www.docarch.be/
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