Re: Jakob Nielsen Column -- PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption

>          RE: Jakob Nielsen Column -- PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption

Jakob Nielsen is hardly in a position to criticize PDF in this manner,
given that he sells PDF reports that are presented in inaccessible
formats.

<http://contenu.nu/article.htm?id=1216>

> 1. Many times images are used in the PDF to present textual content. This is
> not rendered to the end user who is blind, and so we are missing that
> information. This is not acceptable.

You can add alternative text, actual text, and/or title to any figure in a
tagged accessible PDF. I've done it myself (though not with logotypes).

> 2. The order of reading is extremely important

and is tremendously easier to fix in Acrobat 6. It was quite a bother in
Acrobat 5. A well-authored document-- e.g., even a Word 2000 document
using proper styles-- will present itself in nearly the exactly correct
reading order on the first import into PDF most of the time. I've made
multi-column accessible PDFs with no reading-order problems directly in
InDesign, for example.

> 3. Having the PDF page go through a translation

is not necessary with tagged accessible PDF. But if anyone wants to use
it, the Trace PDF converter is still up: <pdf2txt@sun.trace.wisc.edu>.

--

  Joe Clark  |  joeclark@joeclark.org
  Author, _Building Accessible Websites_
  <http://joeclark.org/access/> | <http://joeclark.org/book/>