WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: link to word documents

for

From: Kynn Bartlett
Date: Jan 6, 2003 6:47PM


On Monday, January 6, 2003, at 02:27 PM, Susan wrote:
> They have a list of links to get further information about their
> products but when the links are followed all this information is in
> word
> documents. Apart from the obvious possibility of incompatibility with
> other word processors or even other versions of word are there any
> accessibility issues with this arrangement.

I agree with what Paul Bohman had to say in another reply. I will add
that I believe
it is more useful to provide documents in HTML and PDF instead of
providing them in
HTML and Word. If you are providing a document in a "formatted"
version, such as
Word or PDF, it is better practice to use PDF.

The advantages of PDF are:

* If made correctly, they support structural encoding readable by newer
versions of
the Adobe reader.

* The Acrobat PDF reader is available for free on nearly every platform.

* PDF is often a read-only format (although not exclusively so) and is
thus better
for distribution than Word, which is designed to be editable easily.

* Word files can often contain unintentional information which you
don't wish to
reveal, because Word stores additional information with each file.
For example,
deleted text or information about your computer system is often
stored in a
Word file, and you may not want to release that information.

* Word files can be used to spread destructive macro viruses, while
that danger
does not exist in PDF.

This is _not_ to say that you should use PDF exclusively; you should
offer an HTML
version as well. However, if you have a choice as to which formats to
use, I prefer
them in this order:

1. HTML
2. PDF
3. Word

Also, if you are providing files which _are_ meant to be edited, then
clearly
Word (or RTF) is better in such a case.

--Kynn

--
Kynn Bartlett < <EMAIL REMOVED> > http://kynn.com
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain http://idyllmtn.com
Author, CSS in 24 Hours http://cssin24hours.com


----
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or view list archives,
visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/