WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Series of PDF/UA video tutorials

for

From: Kelly Lupo
Date: Mar 22, 2016 11:50AM

Thank you again! The more I learn, the more I realize how much I still
need to learn. :)

Kelly

On Tue, Mar 22, 2016 at 1:46 PM, Olaf Drümmer < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
wrote:

> Hi Kelly,
>
> > On 22.03.2016, at 18:33, Kelly Lupo < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> >
> > Was there an accessibility reason to disallow transparent effects at the
> > time, or was it purely technical (IE: difficulty in tagging objects
> > appropriately), and advances have made this possible under PDF/A-2?
>
> the development of PDF/A-1 happened during 2002 - 2004 (with publication
> in 2005). At that time, transparency effects (introduced in 2001) were
> still relatively new, and not all (or even the majority of) tools supported
> transparency well (not to mention the trend that tools and systems are only
> updated every 3, 4, 5 or even more years…) - thus transparency still felt
> a bit scary to people who have a focus on predictability / repeatability /
> interoperability when it comes to rendering (on screen or in the form of a
> printout). As a consequence it was decided to not allow transparency for
> the time being. Meanwhile, PDF technology has matured quite a bit across
> the board, and in 2011 it seemed safe to allow transparency.
>
> The decision to disallow transparency in PDF/A-1 had nothing to do with
> (support for) tagging.
>
> Olaf
>
> > > > >