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Thread: Announcement: CommonLook Office 1.2: Accessible PDF from both Word and PowerPoint
Number of posts in this thread: 3 (In chronological order)
From: Duff Johnson
Date: Tue, Aug 14 2012 9:35AM
Subject: Announcement: CommonLook Office 1.2: Accessible PDF from both Word and PowerPoint
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Friends,
Please forgive the commercial intrusion.
This is just a brief note to let you know that CommonLook Office with support for both Word and PowerPoint is now shipping.
Aimed squarely at the corporate cubicle, CommonLook Office makes it easy for everyday non-experts to create properly tagged PDF files directly from the most popular Microsoft Office applications for document creation.
The process is methodical, stepping the user through checkpoints driven by the document's actual content. Once the checkpoints are complete CommonLook Office generates a properly tagged PDF file.
CommonLook Office Professional adds features of interest to power users such as the ability to create fillable, accessible PDF forms from Word and PowerPoint forms, advanced tools for complex table structures, managing workflows, and more.
For more information, please visit this page: http://www.commonlook.com/CommonLook-office
We now return to your regularly scheduled programmingÂ….
Best regards,
Duff Johnson
President, NetCentric Technologies (creators of CommonLook)
Office: +1 617 401 8140
Mobile: +1 617 283 4226
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
http://www.commonlook.com
From: Swamp oodle
Date: Wed, Aug 15 2012 4:33PM
Subject: Re: Announcement: CommonLook Office 1.2: Accessible PDF from both Word and PowerPoint
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Not to be too facetious, but the best way to make PDFs accessible is
to put the content into HTML5 and CSS3. The danger is not that
someone will change the PDF, or that it won't print exactly the way
you want, the danger is that it won't be seen at all.
On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 11:35 AM, Duff Johnson < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Friends,
>
> Please forgive the commercial intrusion.
>
> This is just a brief note to let you know that CommonLook Office with support for both Word and PowerPoint is now shipping.
>
> Aimed squarely at the corporate cubicle, CommonLook Office makes it easy for everyday non-experts to create properly tagged PDF files directly from the most popular Microsoft Office applications for document creation.
>
> The process is methodical, stepping the user through checkpoints driven by the document's actual content. Once the checkpoints are complete CommonLook Office generates a properly tagged PDF file.
>
> CommonLook Office Professional adds features of interest to power users such as the ability to create fillable, accessible PDF forms from Word and PowerPoint forms, advanced tools for complex table structures, managing workflows, and more.
>
> For more information, please visit this page: http://www.commonlook.com/CommonLook-office
>
> We now return to your regularly scheduled programmingÂ….
>
> Best regards,
>
> Duff Johnson
>
> President, NetCentric Technologies (creators of CommonLook)
> Office: +1 617 401 8140
> Mobile: +1 617 283 4226
> = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
> http://www.commonlook.com
> > >
From: Duff Johnson
Date: Wed, Aug 15 2012 6:37PM
Subject: Re: Announcement: CommonLook Office 1.2: Accessible PDF from both Word and PowerPoint
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On Aug 15, 2012, at 6:33 PM, Swamp oodle wrote:
> Not to be too facetious, but the best way to make PDFs accessible is
> to put the content into HTML5 and CSS3. The danger is not that
> someone will change the PDF, or that it won't print exactly the way
> you want, the danger is that it won't be seen at all.
I appreciate this perspective. Undeniably, support for accessible PDF today is less (a lot less) than it should be.
On the other hand, stand-alone fixed-format electronic documents - of which PDF is the dominant type - are a fact of life for all sorts of very good reasons that I won't bore you with unless you want me to.
The issue is really: when are software implementers going to step up to the plate and support accessible PDF as they should?
The answer: when you tell them you want it.
PDF/UA (just published!!) is intended to address the problem by removing the not-entirely-unreasonable excuse that PDF's accessibility features as defined in the PDF Reference (ISO 32000) are fragmentary and vague.
As matters stand today, some implementers scrape the "content" and call the results "reading the PDF". This is inadequate. It might be analogized (highly imperfectly, but for the sake of conveyance to HTML-minded folks) to reading HTML but ignoring CSS.
In PDF it is necessary to process not merely the content but also the "logical structure" for both the logical ordering and semantics of content.
Once PDF accessibility features are more fully supported by implementers in authoring, editing and reading tools you'll enjoy a similar (indeed, highly consistent) experience with AT, comparable to HTML/CSS.
Best regards,
Duff Johnson
President, NetCentric US
ISO 32000 Intl. Project Co-Leader, US Chair
ISO 14289 (PDF/UA), US Chair
PDF Association Vice-Chair
Office: +1 617 401 8140
Mobile: +1 617 283 4226
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
www.CommonLook.com
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