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Re: questions about accessible pdfs

for

From: Sachin Pavithran
Date: Feb 27, 2004 3:21PM

Personally in my experience of using PDF's with JAWS even recently, there
were times when it was really frustrating. especially when I didn't know it
was a PDF file that was opening up. I wouldn't know what happened when I
clicked the link and I've ended up closing the whole window. I would rather
not even deal with PDF files, especially because navigating in it is also
confusing and frustrating at times.




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Sachin Dev Pavithran
Training and Development Specialist
Center for Persons with Disabilities
6800 Old Main Hill,
Logan, Ut - 84322
U.S.A.

Work Phone : 1-(435)-797 0974

Email : <EMAIL REMOVED>

Visit Us at http://www.cpd.usu.edu

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----- Original Message -----
From: "Jukka K. Korpela" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
To: < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2004 11:48 AM
Subject: Re: questions about accessible pdfs


> On Wed, 25 Feb 2004, Joe Clark wrote:
>
> > This discussion is already a major step up from the typical
> > shibboleth that "PDFs are not accessible!" which I am a bit tired of.
>
> I thought the common shibboleth was either "we need to use PDF" or
> "in Adobe we trust" (including Adobe's marketese about accessibility
> enhancements).
>
> PDF is a serious obstacle to the majority, so the finer points of removing
> some specific impediments relevant to minorities aren't that essential in
> the big picture. Besides, those finer points require not only that authors
> invest money and learning time to buy versions of Adobe Acrobat but also
> that users have programs that can utilize the new features.
>
> As long as it is common experience that clicking on a link to a PDF page
> produces a _long_ wait and then perhaps a white window, perhaps IE crash,
> perhaps system crash, and sometimes a display of a document in a rigid
> format, I will keep saying "PDFs are not accessible". This probably means
> as long as PDF is PDF (Printable Document Format - your may have heard
> just the other, official, expansion).
>
> --
> Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
>
>
> ----
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>


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