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Re: A better PDF editor for accessibility?

for

From: Olaf Drümmer
Date: Jun 11, 2013 2:42PM

... a couple of remarks:

- price of software:
- NVDA: free of charge
- Adobe Reader: free of charge
- VIP-PDF-Reader (to be released June 24, 2013, at www.szb.ch): free of charge
- callas pdfGoHTML: free of charge
(admittedly, and for the time being
while it's not yet Reader enabled,
you also have to own Acrobat Pro)

- adhering to specs:
- the PDF spec encourages developers to make TUROT match logical order but
does not require it, and it clearly states that sometimes it may not be feasible
(and it does state this for a reason)
- PDF/UA also requires correct logical order but not TUROT order

- overall:
- accessible PDF so far has not been a success story
- it has the potential to become a first class citizen in the world of accessible content
BUT ONLY if it is not too difficult to make them
- people who wear the black belt of PDF remediation are not in the best position to
shape the way forward because they don't scale well (and they are potentially biased
because they make a living off of bad PDF under artificially difficult conditions)
- instead creation of accessible PDF must be democratized
(it must become easy for every document creator to produce an accessible PDF,
insisting on TUROT order will substantially slow that down)


Just my 2 cents....

Olaf