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Re: A better PDF editor for accessibility?

for

From: Jonathan Metz
Date: Jun 11, 2013 10:48AM

Unfortunately for many of us, we don’t have the luxury of selecting one
set of guidelines based on the type of software something is. I think this
would be both awesome and horrible, but that’s a conversation for another
day. :)

As Duff pointed out, it’s intended for people who are using something that
doesn’t understand tags. One could argue that this is necessary to conform
to many provisions of Section 508 here in the US, such as 1194.21 (d), .22
(d), .31 (a). Both the Veteran’s Administration (VA) and Health and Human
Services (HHS) discuss these requirements in their PDF checklists (VA:
1194.31 (a.18), 1194.22 (d.21) and HHS: 1.0 (12) and 3.0 (22)).

Further, one could argue that this has something to do with WCAG 2.0
(1.3.2 Meaningful Sequence).

I don’t think that it’s an unnecessary step. While it seems logical to
think that we’re pulling out our hair for “old tech”, a perfect example
happened to me only a couple years ago. When I tried to make a subway map
accessible, John Brandt from jebsweb was nice enough to point out that he
wasn’t able to use the Reading Order to make any sense of it since he was
using Preview. I don’t use Preview, but I think that it still can’t
understand tags. That’s a pretty common tech that falls under this
category.