Please review proposed response to Wayne Dick comment

We've drafted a response, based on last week's discussion. Please let
us know if there are any problems. Otherwise, we will send this out at
the end of the day today.

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Hi Wayne,

Thank you for sending your comments in to the group.
We reviewed them carefully as a full group and did some background
research as well.

Your analysis was quite interesting and we agreed with the first half
but did not follow your second half.

First it turns out there are assistive technologies that will allow
you to change fonts, font size, font color etc in a PDF.
 -  Acrobat Reader and Acrobat Pro allow you to change font color,
font size, and it will reflow text to avoid horizontal scrolling.
 -  ZoomText 8.1 / DocReader allows you to change the font.

So there is accessibility support for font changing, font-face, size,
and colors.

But beyond this we looked at the broader question you raised.   And we
concluded that SC 1.3.1 is automatically satisfied for content that
qualifies as text ("sequence of characters that can be
programmatically determined, where the sequence is expressing
something in human language").   So 1.3.1 was met generically as well.
   PDF can be read - and can be read by assistive technologies.  The
fact that regular user agents do not allow all of the desired
behaviors would not make content fail SC 1.3.1.

In addition, the visual presentation of text is addressed at Level AA
by 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum), SC 1.4.4 Resize text, 1.4.5 Images of
Text, and at Level AAA by 1.4.6 Contrast (Enhanced), 1.4.8 Visual
Presentation, and 1.4.9 Images of Text (No Exception)

Thank you for your inquiry.  If you have further questions - please
let us know.

The WCAG Working Group

Received on Wednesday, 23 December 2009 15:50:41 UTC