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Re: Australian Government guidance on PDF Accessibility

for

From: Webb, KerryA
Date: Jan 9, 2011 3:21PM

Cliff wrote:

>
> Kerry, if the documents you're producing with Acrobat Pro or the Save As
> PDF feature are inaccessible, the Word or RTF files will not be
> substantially better. If the structure is in the Word document, it will
> carry through to a PDF created by those methods. If your authors aren't
> using styles properly in Word, then a screen reader won't be able to
> identify headings in that environment, either.
>

Good points, thank you.

> I hope I don't offend by saying this again, but we've found that along
> with proper training it's necessary to put an interface that supports the
> creation of accessible documents in front of the person using the word
> processor. For Word 2003, I created an Accessibility toolbar. When my
> workplace moved to Word 2007, I worked with our IT staff to create an
> Accessibility tab (it also works in Office 2010).
>

I have been known to be easily offended, but not by useful comments like this. Alas, I have little control over the system configurations of the people involved - but I will add this to the wish list.

>
> If you want, I can send you a zip file containing some instructional
> materials on using these interfaces as well as templates that, if placed
> in the Word startup folder, will make the respective feature available
> whenever you open Word.
>

Thank you. I would appreciate this.

Kerry
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