WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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RE: Adobe Acrobat 5.0

for

From: Paul Bohman
Date: Sep 9, 2002 4:41PM

That's great that you've decided to make your PDF documents more
accessible.

If you haven't already done so, try these resources:

WebAIM article on PDF accessibility-
http://www.webaim.org/howto/acrobat

Adobe PDF accessibility main page
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/solutionsacc.html

Adobe tutorial:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/access_booklet.html

The short story is that the documents have to be created accessibly,
with true headings (e.g. not just bold text), alt text for images, table
headings, and so on. Tables need to be as simple as possible. Graphs,
charts and other complex objects need to be explained in text. In other
words, apply the same type of accessibility techniques to PDF as you
would to HTML. And, the truth is, it's still a good idea to provide an
HTML alternative in addition to the PDF file, giving the user the
ability to choose between them.

Paul Bohman
Technology Coordinator
WebAIM (Web Accessibility in Mind)
www.webaim.org
Center for Persons with Disabilities
www.cpd.usu.edu
Utah State University
www.usu.edu