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Re: PDF and ePub Formats

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From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: May 12, 2010 1:57PM

Denis,
There are two ways to answer your question.

Focusing on the format alone, both formats (epub and PDF) provide the semantics necessary to deliver an accessible document. I haven't done a side by side comparison of these to a fine-grain level, but I believe that they both contain the capacity for rich semantic information. So, from this view they both have the same potential for out of the box accessibility.

Focusing on the end-user and assuming that the documents take advantage of the semantics of each format and are authored correctly, I'd be inclined to say that the PDF will be more accessible to more users with the tools that they have. There is increasing support for epub, but in my opinion the support for PDF by assistive technologies is better.

Thanks,
AWK

Andrew Kirkpatrick
Group Product Manager, Accessibility
Adobe Systems

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