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Re: How is PDF accessibility evaluated?

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From: Karlen Communications
Date: Feb 7, 2015 4:04AM

I am going to reluctantly wade into the fray and then back out of it.

I am, and those of us on the various PDF/UA committees for our countries are advocating for the adoption of PDF/UA into legislation and genral "this is what an accessible PDF is" standard. I am on the Canadian committee and have been for many years. I also use adaptive technology.

I look at inclusion from a global perspective and the Incheon Strategy to Make the Right Real in the Asia Pacific Region which is a strategy to implement the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities states that for digital content international standards are to be implemented. This is quite progressive and allows for the immediate adoption and implementation of standards as they are developed.

In terms of the Access Board "standards" or guidelines or best practices, I have some serious concerns about the direction they are headed or it looks like they are implementing. I was at a webinar this past week and was gobsmacked to hear them recommend as a standard/guideline/best practice/requirement that tables be used for design layout in Word, that text boxes be used in Word instead of formatted styles and that the null attribute be used for decorative images in Word documents.

One person did ask if the null attribute worked the same way in Word as it did in HTML and the response was telling in terms of an understanding of how standards/guidelines/requirements are being perceived and even knowledge about accessible document design in general. The answer from the people who created this training and guidance/requirements was that it didn't work in Word but it was a WCAG requirement/technique so it was included in their new standard/guidelines/requirements.

I used the slash to separate the terms standard/guidelines/requirements/best practice because during the 90 minute webinar these terms were used interchangeably and I still don't know if these are going to be what the Access Board and Department of Education as well as federal agencies are going to mandate be put in place and accepted.

This training/requirements/guidelines/standards/best practices were developed by a small group and the focus seems to be on those using screen readers and not really paying attention to what we know is and isn't accessible or even good document design. There is also no mechanism for anyone outside of the committee that created these standards/guidelines/ requirements/best practices to comment or help them reshape their documentation.

I am a Microsoft MVP for Word and a Microsoft Accessibility MVP. I know that work has been done to make text boxes in Word more accessible and although progress has been made, access is still hit and miss in terms of the adaptive technology. It also appears that the material developed by/for the Access Board and Department of Education is not thinking of backward compatibility even to Word 2007. The example they gave for using tables for design layout is actually a good example of where Tab Stops should be used to optimize the content for accessibility.

...and the next webinar and set of standards/guidelines/requirements/best practices are on accessible PDF!!!!!!

As someone who has been working in this field for over a decade, has written books on creating and working with accessible PDF, Word and PowerPoint as well as general accessible document design and done a lot of training and workshops at conferences, and someone who depends on adaptive technology to access digital content, I am really concerned that adoption of these standards/guidelines/requirements/best practices are going to create more inaccessible content that will need remediation before it is accessible.

Going back to the PDF part of this discussion. PDF/UA gives us the tool to answer the question "what do you mean by or want in an accessible PDF? We can now say, it has to be PDF/UA compliant. We don't really care how you get there, but this is where you need to end up.

To add more fuel to the discussion, here is a link to an interview I've done in advance of my PDF/UA session at CSUN.
http://www.accessiq.org/news/features/2015/02/accessible-pdfs-and-the-potential-of-pdfua

Backing out of the fray now and skulking in the background. Nice to hear from you Loretta!

Cheers, Karen