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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

<EMAIL REMOVED>
http://twitter.com/awkawk
http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility


-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Denis Boudreau
Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 2010 7:28 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: [WebAIM] PDF and ePub Formats

Hi folks,

A friend of mine asked me a question I have no answer for. I'm hoping you guys can provide some insights.

If documents were to be published in ePub format instead of PDF, would they have a better potential for "out-of-the-box" accessibility?

I am quite familiar with the potential/limitations and procedure required to make a PDF document accessible. I know what kind of effort it takes, and what we can squeeze out of the format.

However, I have no clue about the accessibility potential of the ePub format which makes it impossible for me to compare. According to what Google says on the matter, ePub is appearently recognized as an accessible format, but what about it? Any thoughts on the subject?

Does it even make sense to try and compare them?

--
Denis Boudreau
www.twitter.com/dboudreau