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RE: adobe 6.0 accessibility

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From: Zwack, Melanie
Date: Oct 10, 2003 11:10AM


I've been using Acrobat 6.0 Professional version and had worked a lot with
Acrobat 5.0 (actually Acrobat 5.0.5).

Anything developed correctly in Microsoft Office 2000 (Word, Excel,
PowerPoint) converts wonderfully and only required the addition of
alternative text tags for graphic images. Apparently, in the Acrobat 6.0
Professional overview Adobe states that Microsoft Office 2000, Microsoft
Office XP, FrameMaker 7.0, InDesign CS, and PageMaker 7.0 have been
specially developed to work with and convert to accessible PDF format very
nicely. There are probably some development guidelines for preparing the
document as there are for Office 2000 which requires styles be implemented
throughout the document, and other development guidelines.

From my experience, Quark documents sometimes convert well, and other times
doesn't convert that well. In very graphic layouts, I've had funny stuff
happening where the background graphics overlay the front layer of text, and
all kinds of funny stuff. Sometimes, these are fixable, sometimes not. But,
I ought to qualify the factor that Quark documents in my department are
clearly not always developed in a correct styles and structural manner as is
suggested in order for documents to convert well to accessible PDF format.

I've had a lot of luck with WordPerfect documents converting very nicely to
accessible PDF format.

For Legacy PDFs ( those PDFs where there is no original document format to
go back to and correct/enhance then reconvert back to PDF format) sometimes
work fine and other times don't. If it's too bad, sometimes conversion to
accessible PDF format may not even be possible. There are some minor work
arounds such as placing text in figure or shape tags that have been
implemented on the page by the make accessible (Add tags to document)
function. In the worst case scenarios either convert to HTML or pull the
text out back into a software layout program such as Word 2000 and just
begin the process from scratch if really intent on accessible PDF format
(ASCII/HTML not an option).

One drawback that I've discovered is that the file size when converted to
accessible PDF format increases by at least a third in most/many cases which
can be problematic especially when the PDF has a larger size to begin with.

Even in Acrobat 6.0 Professional version I have not been able to manually
add tags. For some reason, this is not possible. This was a known problem in
Acrobat 5.0, and seems to continue to be a problem in Acrobat 6.0
Professional (at least for me it does) . ******Questions: What experiences
have any other people had with this? How are people adding tags manually if
not already added by the Add Tags to Document (Make Accessible
function)?*******

I've noticed the Add Tags to Document (Make Accessible function) has
improved the output in Acrobat 6.0 Professional in comparison to Acrobat
5.0. Sometimes, a document that might not have worked in Acrobat 5.0 is
converting nicely in Acrobat 6.0 Professional to accessible PDF format.

Another factor, is that the interface to clean up the PDF is much nicer and
easier to use in Acrobat 6.0 Professional in comparison to Acrobat 5.0.

-- Melanie