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Re: PowerPoint accessibility-alt question

for

From: Karlen Communications
Date: Apr 25, 2014 3:46AM


The thing to keep in perspective is that until Leopard there was no screen
reader for the Mac. So for Microsoft, Adobe and many others, there was no
implementation of accessibility or any way to predict how or if
accessibility would be implemented on a Mac.

Microsoft is trying to catch up as are other developers but it is going to
take time to "bend" old code to the hooks for accessibility. Not sure where
Adobe is on the scale of implementing a more accessible viewer so we have
more granular access.

I too, am inpatient for access on all my devices so that accessing content
is seamless and painless and doesn't require app specific tools like
built-in AT. I want to be able to use the tools I know to access any type of
content.

Having said that, I am now a Microsoft Accessibility MVP (as of April 23
this is a new category of MVP). I am still an MVP for Word and have been for
5 years. There are 70 of us Accessibility MVP's representing almost all
Microsoft products.

I know it's been a while on this list since I mentioned this, but if you
have accessibility issues or feature requests, let me know.

So, at any time, send me issues or feature requests and I'll pass them
along.

Cheers, Karen

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Paul J. Adam
Sent: April 24, 2014 7:19 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] PowerPoint accessibility-alt question

Does Windows include a Microsoft PDF viewer app by default that reads
tagged, accessible PDFs? I thought Adobe Reader/Acrobat was the only way to
view tagged PDFs with a screen reader on Windows?

Apple should totally make PDF's accessible directly in Preview but it also
seems like Adobe could make Reader for OS X read tagged PDFs like they did
for Reader on Windows.

PDFs are not accessible on iOS or Android either. Is that Apple & Google's
fault or Adobe's? Seems like Adobe could make Reader apps for iOS and
Android that read tagged PDFs if they wanted to. I think we can definitely
blame Microsoft for not making MS Office accessible on OS X right!?

At least we always have the universally accessible, HTML format that works
on ANY platform ;)


Paul J. Adam
Accessibility Evangelist
www.deque.com

On Apr 24, 2014, at 5:42 PM, Duff Johnson < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> John,
>
>> I will not defend Apple on this one, but the issue regarding the
>> inaccessibility of PDF in the Mac OS is with Adobe.
>
> Let's be clear.
>
> The issue of Adobe's support for Tagged PDF on the Mac is Adobe's problem.
>
> The issue of Apple's support for Tagged PDF is Apple's problem.
>
> PDF is just PDF. There's nothing Adobe-specific about accessible PDF.
>
>> The Adobe Acrobat Reader
>> simply does not work with VoiceOver on the Mac OS.
>> Like many legacy third
>> party applications for the Mac OS, including Microsoft Office for the
>> Mac, Adobe has not been willing to spend the money to rewrite the
>> application to work with VoiceOver.
>> In fairness, it would be an expensive process, particularly for a
>> piece of software that is given away for free.
>
> That's fair - but most Mac users use Preview to read PDF files.
>
> The other way to look at it is this:
>
> Apple - the richest software company on the planet - is unwilling (so far)
to make Preview, their PDF viewer, work with accessible PDF.
>
> I contrasted Apple and NVDA in this regard in a blog-post earlier this
year:
>
> http://duff-johnson.com/2013/03/01/inaccessible-by-choice-pdf-on-macos
> /
>
>> Currently, as others have mentioned, you can view/read PDF files
>> using the free Preview application built into Mac OSX. But this will
>> only read the text and you will lose all of the tagging including
>> headings and layout features.
>
> This is 100% Apple's choice - it has nothing to do with Adobe. No-one
forced Apple to support PDF in Preview!
>
>> As for making accessible PDF documents with the Mac OSX, the last
>> time I checked, the only way was with LibreOffice (and perhaps
>> OpenOffice). You can make an accessible word publisher document and
>> save it as a PDF and it would retain the proper tagging. Honestly, I
>> haven't checked that for several years, but I would assume it still
works.
>
> It does. OpenOffice will create a tagged PDF on the Mac. I just checked /
confirmed.
>
> Thank you for the reminder / correction.
>
> Duff.
>
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