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Thread: Are PDF portfolios accessible to screen readers?

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Number of posts in this thread: 4 (In chronological order)

From: Iza Bartosiewicz
Date: Thu, Jul 01 2010 1:30AM
Subject: Are PDF portfolios accessible to screen readers?
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Hi everyone,

Can anyone enlighten me regarding the accessibility of PDF portfolios? Assuming that the portfolio includes properly tagged PDF documents, is it possible for people using screen readers (or keyboard only) to navigate to and open the individual documents?

I've just been given a portfolio file to test and I couldn't access the individual documents using keyboard alone. This may be because the portfolio I got was poorly put together, but the fact that Read Out Loud options were greyed-out, and the accessibility check wasn't available may mean that the problem lies with the portfolio format, not just that single example.

Info about PDF portfolios: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Acrobat/9.0/Standard/WS0FAA9C25-EBE6-4492-9504-7565D0097800.html

Thanks

Iza

From: Karlen Communications
Date: Thu, Jul 01 2010 5:51AM
Subject: Re: Are PDF portfolios accessible to screen readers?
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Not at this time. Portfolios are displayed in a Flash application that is
not accessible.

There is a setting in the user preferences under Accessibility I think to
not use Portfolio to display content but I find that Acrobat 9/not sure
about Reader 9 doesn't always respect this. Sometimes if something has been
saved as a Portfolio and you do have the option not to view things in
Portfolio checked you will get a sort of hybrid where the content is
displayed using Acrobat/Reader but the Find tool results in an inaccessible
Flash based list of found items.

Adobe does know about this and is working on it.

Cheers, Karen

From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Thu, Jul 01 2010 9:00AM
Subject: Re: Are PDF portfolios accessible to screen readers?
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There is a preference, as Karen mentions, in the Acrobat and Reader preferences (accessibility category, under "other accessibility options"). The option is labeled "Always show portfolios in platform control".

One of the items we discussed at CSUN is work to make portfolios accessible without this fallback preference being required, so we plan to have a much easier approach in a future release.

Thanks,
AWK

Andrew Kirkpatrick
Group Product Manager, Accessibility
Adobe Systems

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http://twitter.com/awkawk
http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility


From: Iza Bartosiewicz
Date: Fri, Jul 02 2010 1:12AM
Subject: Re: Are PDF portfolios accessible to screen readers?
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Thanks Karen and Andrew for clarifying this.
I'm going to recommend that we avoid using portfolios until their accessibility is improved.

Andrew, I hope you'll tweet the good news when it happens! :)

cheers
Iza
--

----
Izabella Bartosiewicz
Web Coordinator
RMIT University Library

03 9925 3103
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www.rmit.edu.au/library
www.linkedin.com/in/izabartosiewicz
twitter.com/mr0wka18 ( http://www.twitter.com/mr0wka18 )

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>>> On 02/07/10 at 0:01, Andrew Kirkpatrick < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> There is a preference, as Karen mentions, in the Acrobat and Reader
> preferences (accessibility category, under "other accessibility options").
> The option is labeled "Always show portfolios in platform control".
>
> One of the items we discussed at CSUN is work to make portfolios accessible
> without this fallback preference being required, so we plan to have a much
> easier approach in a future release.
>
> Thanks,
> AWK
>
> Andrew Kirkpatrick
> Group Product Manager, Accessibility
> Adobe Systems
>
> = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
> http://twitter.com/awkawk
> http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility
>
>
>