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RE: PDF advice needed

for

From: julian.rickards@ndm.gov.on.ca
Date: May 12, 2003 5:54AM

Hi Ian:

Part of my job at the Ontario Ministry of Northern Development and Mines
(Ontario, Canada) is to produce Accessible PDFs and in preparation for this,
I attended a workshop from Adobe back in October 2002.

At that time, only Word 2000 or Word 2002 or current Adobe DTP products
(InDesign, PageMaker) output Accessible PDFs. I use Word 2000/2 at home and
work and all PDFs created at work for public distribution are Accessible.

You can take a PDF and run it through Acrobat's Make Accessible plugin but
that is recommended only as a last resort when the original document is not
available or the original application cannot produce Accessible PDFs. The
plugin (free download) marks up the document but all blocks are paragraphs -
for best use, headings should be marked as such and graphics should be given
proper Alternate Text.

My work does not require me to create forms so I have no experience with PDF
forms, accessible or otherwise.

If you would like me to share some notes I had created for my successor (I
am just on contract), I can do so. However, I may need a day or two to
remove some details that should not be released (password, etc.).

HTH,

Jules


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