The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about pdf:

When acrobat 4.05 with the access plug in came out and you could export
a useful document to text or html and there were tools available for
accessing pdf documents on platforms in addition to windows, We had fair
access.

With the emergence of acrobat reader 5.0 even though the mark up
capabilities have improved for rendering in it, we still have issues
with rendering in other than windows platforms and till recently could
not even export to text.  The only improvements to access of pdf
documents are for those running the latest assistive technologies that
support the accessible features of acrobat 5.0.5 and for those who are
able to recieve the newly marked up documents converted by the tools
that have been also been improved.  This leaves out quite a substantial
portion of who is still alive and likely to be for a long time to come.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kynn Bartlett" <kynn-edapta@idyllmtn.com>
To: "Access Systems" <accessys@smart.net>
Cc: "David Poehlman" <poehlman1@home.com>; "Scott Luebking"
<phoenixl@sonic.net>; <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Monday, December 24, 2001 2:51 PM
Subject: Re: Multiple versions of a web page


At 2:38 PM -0500 12/24/01, Access Systems wrote:
>On Mon, 24 Dec 2001, Kynn Bartlett wrote:
>
>well I don't want to discount it, but his site says it is only
avaliable
>in pdf format which by (my) deffinition is not accessible

But not by all definitions -- for example, by Adobe's definitions,
if they made it with the latest software using the techniques to
improve screenreader access, it may very well be accessible.

(I don't know if it was made in such a way or not, but PDF may not be
an absolute barrier to access these days.)

--Kynn

--
Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com>                 http://kynn.com
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain            http://idyllmtn.com
Web Accessibility Expert-for-hire          http://kynn.com/resume
January Web Accessibility eCourse           http://kynn.com/+d201

Received on Monday, 24 December 2001 15:17:05 UTC