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Re: A better PDF editor for accessibility?

for

From: Jonathan Metz
Date: Jun 11, 2013 4:57PM

Olaf Drümmer wrote:


>- NVDA: free of charge

Only works on PC (for now?)

>- Adobe Reader: free of charge

Doesn¹t come installed on a Mac, considered by some to be the cats pajamas
of accessibility.

>- 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)

Totally awesome software making Acrobat Pro better than it is.

>- accessible PDF so far has not been a success story

Isn¹t it premature to make this statement? Isn¹t it less than a year old?

>- 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

It¹s only difficult to make it if the software lacks in some fashion.

>- people who wear the black belt of PDF remediation are not in the best
>position to shape the way forward...

There is very little one ever has to worry about that. People who excel at
remediation have little to no ability to shape the way forward. We are at
the mercy of the governments and corporations that dictate which
provisions we must follow.

>...they are potentially biased because they make a living off of bad PDF
>under artificially difficult conditions)

Not sure I understand this statement?

>- instead creation of accessible PDF must be democratized (it must become
>easy for every document creator to produce an accessible PDF,

To assume that software will ever be able to 100% create accessible
content some how according to the various specs is not practical. Software
currently cannot handle all the various manual things that a user must do
to ensure accessibility.

>insisting on TUROT order will substantially slow that down)

100% agree. Unfortunately, people who create accessible content are at the
mercy of the laws and provisions of the land. It¹s easy for you to say to
ignore it, but for those of us with Federal contracts, it isn¹t so easy...

Jonathan