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Re: How is PDF accessibility evaluated?

for

From: Ron
Date: Feb 6, 2015 6:13PM

The W3C is the developer of specifications for web based content. The are
not a standards board.

There are actually several different standards organization's in this space
both domestically and internationally.

You should definitely be using W CAG 2.0 as your guidance for content
delivered via the web but it is incomplete for content delivered via other
mediums.

Ron Stewart
On Feb 6, 2015 6:59 PM, "Chagnon | PubCom" < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Susan wrote: "So I shouldn't be using the WCAG guidelines (and I thought
> the W3 was a standards board) at all?"
>
> WAI is the standards board for accessibility, under the larger W3C
> organization.
> WCAG are the guidelines developed by the WAI.
>
> It's not that you shouldn't be using the WCAG guidelines for PDFs, it's
> more that they were written specifically for website/HTML information and
> many of guidelines don't fit well with PDFs . Remember, when they were
> initially developed around 2000 (if I recall the dates correctly), they
> addressed only website information. Office documents and PDFs weren't then
> -- and still aren't today -- specifically addressed.
>
> Four terms to understand in this discussion:
> -- Guidelines, as in "WCAG" means a broad overview of what's trying to be
> achieved. Sometimes those guidelines apply, sometimes they don't, depending
> upon the material, file format, content, usage, etc. Quoting from the WCAG
> website, "The 12 guidelines provide the basic goals that authors should
> work toward in order to make content more accessible to users with
> different disabilities. The guidelines are not testable, but provide the
> framework and overall objectives to help authors understand the success
> criteria and better implement the techniques." Note the phrase, guidelines
> are not testable.
> -- A standard is a hard and fixed requirement. It's measureable and the
> content either passes or fails. (Or wins a court case or not, or the owner
> is fined or not, etc.)
> -- A success criteria or checkpoint is a way to test whether a guideline
> has been met.
> -- And a technique is a suggestion as to how the
> guidelines/standards/success criteria can be met by those who create the
> content.
>
> So yes, you should still refer to WCAG, but in regards to PDFs, WAI has
> only given us suggestions and methods, not standards or even guidelines.
> It's one person's way of doing things (or maybe it was put together by a
> small group). There are many other "techniques" you could use to achieve
> the same results.
>
> On the other hand, the PDF UA is an ISO standard; ISO = the International
> Standards Organization. These are defined standards and thus give us
> something to assess PDFs, haul people's butts into court, etc. But the PDF
> US standards have to become more widely accepted and formally adopted by
> governments and other institutions before they can be applied, and I
> believe that's what Duff and his crew are working on. Well, I hope they are.
>
> In reviewing WCAG itself, more than half of the guidelines don't apply at
> all to PDFs for one reason or another, but mostly because we just can do
> some of those tasks in PDFs. Or in Word documents, for that matter.
>
> One more quirk in all this:
> -- W3C sets the standards for HTML, so they can write any standards and
> guidelines they want to cover websites.
> -- But Acrobat PDF is controlled by Adobe, MS Word et al by Microsoft.
> So an outsider like the W3C can't tell these 2 corporations what to do
> with their software and proprietary formats. It's a detente situation: all
> the players have to come to mutual agreement on these things. Luckily, both
> Adobe and Microsoft have been fairly decent on this, not perfect, but
> better than most software companies. Ask anyone how accessible Oracle's
> software is!
>
> --Bevi Chagnon
>
>
>