Misinterpretation of list of assistive technologies and versions supporting PDF techniques

Name: Andrew Arch
Email: andrew.arch@finance.gov.au
Affiliation: Australian Government Information Management Office
Document: TD
Item Number: (none selected)
Part of Item: Description
Comment Type: technical
Summary of Issue: Misinterpretation of list of assistive technologies and versions supporting PDF techniques
Comment (Including rationale for any proposed change):
Readers may interpret this list as ‘only these versions and later’ support PDF accessibility.

Proposed Change:
AGIMO requests urgent clarification on the versions of the assistive technologies (AT)
that fully or partially support PDF accessibility through the proposed Techniques. This is
already done, in part, for WindowEyes.

To assist organisations and governments establish when PDF is suitably “Accessibility
Supported” (http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/#accessibility-supporteddef) for their
audience, a table of AT version by PDF techniques is highly desirable. This table may
only require a few versions older than the current release, where applicable (i.e. support is
available in those releases).

It will be difficult for the Australian Government to determine the use of PDF as a
WCAG 2.0 conforming technology, under the definition of Accessibility Support for our
jurisdiction, without this clarification.

Received on Thursday, 8 September 2011 11:40:40 UTC