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Re: Do fonts have to be embedded in a WCAG 2.0 conforming PDF document?

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From: Duff Johnson
Date: Apr 15, 2015 4:46AM

Hi Patrick,

>> Someone told me today that it's possible to conform to WCAG 2.0 without embedding fonts in PDF documents.
>>
>> There are no ‘official' WCAG 2.0 PDF Techniques specific to this subject (I just checked).
>>
>> What is your understanding of this point? Does WCAG 2.0 require font embedding in PDF documents, or not?
>
> A quick note that WCAG 2.0 does not *require* any specific technology/technique to be used. So even if there was a specific technique that said "Embed fonts in PDFs" that would not mean that WCAG 2.0 requires it, as techniques are only informative, not normative.

Understood. I included that statement as information pertaining to my question, not to imply that Techniques are normative.

> In a wider sense, what success criterion do you think is related to whether or not fonts are embedded?

At this point I'm preferring to focus on learning what others think of the question rather than offering my own answer.

> I.e. if fonts are not embedded, what SC do you think is failing? If that failure can be turned into a pass/success if fonts *are* enabled, then that is justification enough for embedding the fonts.

So… what do you think? Which SC applies, if any?

Duff.