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Re: Accessible "save as PDF" plug ins for Word on OSX

for

From: John E Brandt
Date: Jan 7, 2011 3:54PM

Just a heads up for a point of clarification: that there seems to be two
conversations going on here. The initial question was directed at MS-Office
for the Mac. However, some folks have been discussing the Windows version of
MS-Office. These have been two very different products that do not work the
same way. There have been a number of things in the Mac versions that are
dramatically different from the Windows version.

In the Windows version of MS-Office there have been several PDF conversion
plugins over the years including one that was produced by Adobe and that
only got installed when you installed Adobe Acrobat AFTER you have installed
MS-Office.

My experience with both MS-Office v2007 and v2010 - both in Windows - has
shown that the native "Save as PDF" worked just fine in converting a Word
.docx file to an accessible .pdf file if the original Word document is
correctly created with all of the appropriate accessibility guidelines met.
I note that files that were from the older version of Word (v2003 and using
.doc extension) did not convert smoothly.

None of the files created in MS-Office for Mac 2009 were able to create an
accessible Word or PDF file because you cannot add ALT descriptions to
images.

John E. Brandt
www.jebswebs.com
<EMAIL REMOVED>
207-622-7937
Augusta, Maine, USA