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Thread: Using the accessibility features of Acrobat
Number of posts in this thread: 6 (In chronological order)
From: Wayne Dick
Date: Wed, May 31 2006 1:20PM
Subject: Using the accessibility features of Acrobat
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After the big discussion of Acrobat
earlier this year, I thoutht was time
to buy the software and see what it
can do.
First, Adobe is really serious about
accessibility. That being said I'm
having trouble with a couple of
things.
Problems with Authoring:
1) Acrobat added a some uninvited
stuff to my MS Word menuand it takes
more space than it is worth in my
large print environment. How do I
ditch that stuff?
2) In Acrobat the menus don't conform
to my Windows size preferences so I
can see the items. Can they be
enlarged?
3) The documentation is small and it
doesn't come up in the regular player,
so I can't make it big enough to see
without horizantal scrolling. How can
I fix that?
4) I can't see the Preference menu.
Is a screen manifier or reader the
only option?
Problems with Browsing:
5) The Adobe reader voice is very
slow! Can I speed it up?
6) I don't seem to be able to spread
out the spacing between lines, letters
and words on documents I pull off the
web. For many partially sighted and
dyslexic individuals this is very
important. Is there a fix for this?
7) Size and color control are very
nice, but sometimes authors use fonts
that are difficult at best to read.
Can I re-style the fonts of
reasonably structured documents?
8) Since my web based assistive
technology only reads world wide web
technologies, I do a lot of saving
into markup language. Acrobat saves
to HTML 4.01, but it doesn't behave
all that well. Are there better tools
for converting to HTML, XHTML or XML?
I would really like answers to these
questions because I'm trying to
develop a style guide for faculty and
staff at my university that will help
them produce well structured PDF
documents for campus distribution.
Thank You,
Wayne Dick PhD
Chair Computer Engineering and
Computer Science
Director WebAdapt2Me Project at CSULB
From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Wed, May 31 2006 1:30PM
Subject: RE: Using the accessibility features of Acrobat
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I'm no expert on Acrobat Accessibility, but these...
> 6) I don't seem to be able to spread
> out the spacing between lines, letters
> and words on documents I pull off the
> web.
> 7) Size and color control are very
> nice, but sometimes authors use fonts
> that are difficult at best to read.
> Can I re-style the fonts of
> reasonably structured documents?
> 8) Since my web based assistive
> technology only reads world wide web
> technologies, I do a lot of saving
> into markup language. Acrobat saves
> to HTML 4.01, but it doesn't behave
> all that well. Are there better tools
> for converting to HTML, XHTML or XML?
...seem to be more arguments for more HTML documents and less PDF
documents on campus.
-Darrel
From: Wayne Dick
Date: Wed, May 31 2006 2:20PM
Subject: Re: Using the accessibility features of Acrobat
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I am not really trying to argue in
favor of any tecnology. In fact, I
don't want any kind of arguement. This
really isn't a position.
I'm just trying to identify some
functinality that many partially
sighted users (like me) need. I think
these transformations are possible
with structured PDF. Is anyone
familiar with progress in tis
direction?
Wayne
Wayne Dick PhD
Chair Computer Engineering and
Computer Science
Director WebAdapt2Me Project at CSULB
From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Wed, May 31 2006 2:40PM
Subject: RE: Using the accessibility features of Acrobat
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Wayne,
Some responses:
> Problems with Authoring:
> 1) Acrobat added a some uninvited
> stuff to my MS Word menuand it takes
> more space than it is worth in my
> large print environment. How do I
> ditch that stuff?
You might want to keep it - the way to create tagged PDF is by using
that menu. The acrobat plugin for Word (PDFMaker) relies on Word's
Visual Basic to access the document structure. If you print a PDF using
the print menu you'll get an untagged document. You can, however, move
the menu using Word's customize toolbars option to put it as the last
menu to the right is that is helpful.
> 2) In Acrobat the menus don't conform
> to my Windows size preferences so I
> can see the items. Can they be
> enlarged?
I'm not getting the same result. Can you share what settings you are
changing?
> 3) The documentation is small and it
> doesn't come up in the regular player,
> so I can't make it big enough to see
> without horizantal scrolling. How can
> I fix that?
The documentation player does zoom, but creates a horizontal scroll bar.
> 4) I can't see the Preference menu.
> Is a screen manifier or reader the
> only option?
Some of the text in dialogs (including preferences) doesn't respond to
system font settings. Unfortunately, you may need to resort to a
magnifier or reader here.
> Problems with Browsing:
> 5) The Adobe reader voice is very
> slow! Can I speed it up?
There are settings in the "reading" section of the preference panel that
will allow you to adjust this (assuming that you can read the preference
panel, I know!).
> 6) I don't seem to be able to spread
> out the spacing between lines, letters
> and words on documents I pull off the
> web. For many partially sighted and
> dyslexic individuals this is very
> important. Is there a fix for this?
There is no way to modify only the spacing, but the reflow functionality
will adjust the spacing along with the font size.
> 7) Size and color control are very
> nice, but sometimes authors use fonts
> that are difficult at best to read.
> Can I re-style the fonts of
> reasonably structured documents?
This is not currently a feature. You may be able to address this in your
style guide.
Let me know about your settings and we can keep this conversation going
in a productive direction.
Thanks,
AWK
Andrew Kirkpatrick
Accessibility Engineer
Adobe Systems
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
From: Joe Clark
Date: Fri, Jun 02 2006 2:20PM
Subject: Re: Using the accessibility features of Acrobat
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>1) Acrobat added a some uninvited stuff to my MS Word menuand it
>takes more space than it is worth in my large print environment. How
>do I ditch that stuff?
Through the standard means of reorganizing MS Word menus?
>3) The documentation is small and it doesn't come up in the regular player,
What documentation and which player? You could resort to the blind
person's hack of copying and pasting into another program.
>6) I don't seem to be able to spread out the spacing between lines,
>letters and words on documents I pull off the web. For many
>partially sighted and dyslexic individuals this is very important.
>Is there a fix for this?
I doubt it. I also doubt that you really mean intercharacter and
interword spacing, which requires a page-layout program to alter
(yes, I know Word can kind of do it).
>7) Size and color control are very nice, but sometimes authors use
>fonts that are difficult at best to read. Can I re-style the fonts
>of reasonably structured documents?
In a PDF? No. Which fonts are you thinking of? (Comic Sans and Arial?)
>into markup language. Acrobat saves to HTML 4.01, but it doesn't
>behave all that well. Are there better tools for converting to
>HTML, XHTML or XML?
There are, but they tend to be expensive server-side tools. How is it
"misbehaving"? (You certainly won't get valid HTML out of Acrobat.)
--
Joe Clark | = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
Accessibility <http://joeclark.org/access/>;
Expect criticism if you top-post
From: St
Date: Fri, Jun 02 2006 3:00PM
Subject: Re: Using the accessibility features of Acrobat
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<quote who='Joe Clark' when='02/06/2006 22:06'>
>> 7) Size and color control are very nice, but sometimes authors use
>> fonts that are difficult at best to read. Can I re-style the fonts of
>> reasonably structured documents?
>
> In a PDF? No. Which fonts are you thinking of? (Comic Sans and Arial?)
Joke aside, my company's been using a fat font for a few years, and it's
a hell of a reading. That would be a big plus if acrobat reeader
reflowed and at the same time used my preferred font (a la "use my fonts
and not the site's" in accessibility features in browsers).
--
St