WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: PDF Accessibility and Copyright

for

From: Joseph Feria-Galicia
Date: Sep 1, 2016 10:57AM


Sarah,
Thanks so much for raising this question. It is very relevant to many of
us and I'm hoping to gain further insight on how this relates to the
Author's Guild vs. HathiTrust case. Any experts out there?

On Thu, Sep 1, 2016 at 6:55 AM, Duff Johnson < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Unlike HTML or other formats, adding structuring elements to a PDF
> document does not "alter" the untagged (visual) appearance of the document,
> but merely makes the existing document accessible (subject to limits
> imposed by the source).
>
> Yes, users and software both sometimes make mistakes that result in
> changes to appearance, but that's another issue.
>
> It's difficult to see how any agency might take offense at such action,
> but even though some of my best friends are lawyers I've learned not to try
> to predict their concerns. :-)
>
> Duff.
>
> >> We have a lot of PDFs on our university site and it's my goal to make
> them as
> >> accessible as possible. If we own the material, it is one thing, but
> what if we
> >> don't? For example, we have government forms and published journal
> >> articles. We have permission to have these materials on our web site,
> but do
> >> we have the right to alter them by adding tags, alt text, etc?
> >> Is there a fair use rule that applies or do we need permission from each
> >> source?
>
> > > > >



--
*Accessibility Team Lead / Instructional Designer*
Berkeley Resource Center for Online Education (BRCOE)
Suite 453C
1995 University Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94710
Phone: 1 510 664-4017
http://online.berkeley.edu