Re: Fw: Acrobat 4.0 And PDF Accessibility

From experience - a lot of work!

----- Original Message -----
From: Bruce Bailey <bbailey@clark.net>
To: WAI IG <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>; Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 1999 10:04 AM
Subject: Re: Fw: Acrobat 4.0 And PDF Accessibility


> Can anyone speak from experience about the difficulty of converting a
> poorly-structure PDF document to one that is mostly accessible?
>
> For example, if a PDF file is basically a series of text images (from,
say,
> a magazine article), and a (sighted) laborer is available to do the
> after-the-fact transcription, how hard is it to create a new "accessible"
> PDF file?  What tools are needed?  Does the new version of Acrobat change
> any of this?
>
> Thanks.
>
> ----------
> > From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
> > To: Paul Stauffer 301-827-5694 FAX 301-443-6385 <STAUFFERP@cder.fda.gov>
> > Cc: w3c-wai-ig-request <w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org>; IG
> <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
> > Subject: Re: Fw: Acrobat 4.0 And PDF Accessibility
> > Date: Tuesday, June 01, 1999 11:46 AM
> >
> > The major problem with PDF is that it is difficult to know by inspection
> > whether it is accessible. PDF conversion can be done by taking text
> > and putting it into PDF, which has some hooks to get it out again (for
> > example by sending it to the pdf2html converter that Adobe have).
> >
> > The other option is to convert text into an image, and include the image
> in
> > the PDF. (This is one of the ways MS Publisher does HTML pages too.)
This
> > causes a complete failure of accessibility, unless people run everything
> > through OCR software, a (yet-to-be-developed) program to generate
> structural
> > relationships from visual cues, and then reads it.
> >
> > Saving to bad HTML (which most word-processors can do) is better for
> > accessibility, in part because PDF readers are not as widely available
as
> > HTML browsers.
> >
> > Just my 2c worth. I too am interested in the discussion.
> >
> > Charles McCN
>
>

Received on Tuesday, 1 June 1999 22:19:01 UTC