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Re: Australian Government guidance on PDF Accessibility

for

From: Duff Johnson
Date: Jan 5, 2011 9:33AM

On Jan 5, 2011, at 10:53 AM, Langum, Michael J wrote:

> I thought this was an excellent and insightful article.

Thanks! Much appreciated.

> In the article, you mentioned that there was no data comparing
> the costs of remediation (e.g. adding tags, and applying structural
> tags), to reformatting (e.g. into HTML).

Well... there's no study on the subject that I'm aware of. Which is a great shame, because there are lots of strong opinions on this - all of which would greatly benefit from a cold shower of fact.

> You also questioned the cost of providing accessibility before
> and after training authors on the need and methods for adding
> structure and other elements to documents would also be very valuable.

This is one of the things usually neglected when comparing HTML to PDF in accessibility terms. The stumbling point, I think, is that web-content managers are a (relatively) tiny group of technically-minded people. Finding and training HTML authors on accessibility techniques is (relatively) easy... compared to PDF.

In the world of PDF, everyone's an author, regardless of training, software quality, etc.

My point in the article is simply that rather than wishing the "hard case" of PDF away by pretending that PDF can be readily replaced or augmented with HTML, the correct policy simply demands the same accessibility from PDF as is demanded from any other format... and recognizes that broad-based training, education and resources will be necessary to get there.

The alternative is that web-content managers become the choke-point through which all the world's content has to fit before it's accessible, and that's absurd.

> Are you aware of any good studies that make such comparisons.

I wish I was aware of such, but I am not.

> It seems like that would be a good topic for some doctoral student, or Adobe (since they own both Acrobat and Dreamweaver).

Agreed.

Given that this question has distinct budgetary overtones and consequences, and given the existing mandates... it's also an appropriate sort of thing for government agencies to study (or fund the study thereof).

Hint Hint! :-)

Duff Johnson
Appligent Document Solutions
http://www.appligent.com
Blog: http://www.appligent.com/talkingpdf
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