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Re: PDF Help Desk

for

From: Philip Kiff
Date: Sep 10, 2017 3:47PM

I love the idea, Jon. I was looking for just such a resource when I
started remediating PDFs in earnest over the past couple years, and
would have loved to find an active, open community of PDF remediation
professionals.

I've given some thought to how such a community might develop, and
Github isn't the first place that comes to mind - it seems like an
unintuitive place to locate such a resource. I've used github for years,
but I'm not even sure how you imagine someone will get started
contributing - create an issue and then comment on it? Are you looking
for pull requests to your readme?

If the eventual goal is to create a wiki, then why not create a wiki
directly? Maybe I just haven't kept up on how different communities are
using Github as a tool.

Phil.

On 2017-09-09 12:47 PM, Metzessible wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> I got bored last night and started a new repo on my github to provide a way
> for people to help other people make more accessible PDFs. You can find it
> here (in it's beautiful, currently unpopulated state):
>
> https://github.com/metzessible/PDFHelpDesk
>
> I'm aware there's a lot of information out there on how to make PDFs
> accessible, but the resources tend to vary on what's important or relevant
> in terms of document accessibility. It also seems like there's conflicting
> information out there from experts on how to handle PDF in the first place.
> I'm also aware that many accessibility experts simply advise doing
> something else instead. While that's great and all, PDFs are still being
> created resulting in a lot of terrible documents out there.
>
> Further, now that the ISO has released ISO 32000-2 (
> https://www.pdfa.org/publication/iso-32000-2-pdf-2-0/), the methods that we
> use to tag PDFs are going to change eventually. This is bound to cause more
> confusion, frustration, and gnashing of teeth. My hope is to create a
> helpful resource for people who perhaps help create a consensus for what an
> accessible PDF is supposed to look like. It'll also be an inevitable place
> for me to post examples of things I come across in the wild and how to go
> about fixing them.
>
> Hopefully this will become a decent place for those stuck remediating
> documents with little to no guidance, since ignoring it for so long hasn't
> really made the problem of inaccessible PDFs go away. In any case,
> hopefully I'll figure out how to actually use Github a bit better to make
> the most of it. I'm open to suggestions, and apologies in advance for the
> snark in the readme.
>
> Cheers,
> Jon Metz
> > > >