Re: Guideline 11 Interpretation

Hi Alice.

I'm only learning the guidelines myself, so as no expert in that area I'd 
better not comment there. On a production level though, you might want to 
check also on the Adobe site for their online PDF conversion offering. I 
believe when I checked it out last week they had a certain cost for X 
number, or per certain numbers yearly, of conversion of text, html, etc. 
documents into PDF. Also, they have another tool called I believe 
InProduction, which I haven't been able to check out, but it seems to 
evaluate your PDF production according to certain parameters. According to 
the future access plans mentioned above I would hope accessibility might be 
in the works for this product as well, if not already. They have online 
trial/samples of these, and they can be found on the trial/beta page, if 
memory serves.

Daniel Smith
Verizon Wireless


>From: Alice Anderson <alice.anderson@doit.wisc.edu>
>To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
>Subject: Re: Guideline 11 Interpretation
>Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2001 12:10:06 -0600
>
>I'm hoping there can be more discussion/clarification on the
>interpretation of this guideline. The situation here is that
>the biggest portion of a web site is the documentation.
>We make documents available in printed
>form, but also online as PDF files (and many of our users print them from
>the web).  In addition, sponsoring departments and agencies have working
>paper series (100's of them) posted on their web pages as PDF files.
>
>According to accessibility checkpoint 11.1, we should be using HTML instead 
>of
>PDF, but we are concerned not only about the amount of work required to 
>convert
>them all, but that this will interfere with their primary role as printed
>documents.
>
>How are others both interpreting this, and what specifically are you
>doing to assure accessibility when using PDF's. Thanks to all for
>your additional comments.
>
>- alice anderson / uw-madison
>
> >Bruce,
> >
> >While I fully agree with your point, PDF documents can indeed be a
> >problem and an HTML equivalent is highly desirable, I don't
> >personally interpret Guideline 11 as requiring HTML equivalents of
> >online PDF documents for two reasons.
> >
> >(1) The Guidelines address page accessibility.
> >
> >(2) Guideline 11 specifically addresses converting documents (from
> >PDF, PostScript, RTF, etc.) to W3C markup languages (HTML, XML),
> >i.e., to one or more pages.
> >
> >I think the wording in the Note is a bit misleading and that the
> >first sentence of the Note might be reworded (one word actually) to
> >agree with the rest of the paragraph. I'd prefer: "Converting
> >documents (from PDF, PostScript, RTF, etc.) to W3C markup languages
> >(HTML, XML) does not always create an accessible page."
> >
> >Perhaps I'm overlooking something here but I can't see requiring an
> >online PDF document, that may in fact owned by someone else and
> >located on his server, to be converted anymore than requiring all
> >relevant external Web pages owned by others to be accessible before
> >providing links to those pages.
> >
> >Sure I want those pages to be accessible but if those pages are not
> >under my control....
> >
> >Copyright also needs to be considered. What if an online PDF document
> >isn't my document or in the public domain? I don't think it is legal
> >to convert someone else's  PDF document to W3C markup languages
> >(HTML, XML) and make it publicly available.
> >
> >I'm not a lawyer and these are only my personal opinions. Perhaps I'm
> >reading too much into this comment?
> >
> >Regardless, I'd like to see some additional discussion and clarification.
> >
> >Larry G. Hull
> >Greenbelt, Maryland
> >
> >
> >At 9:13 AM -0500 12/15/00, Bailey, Bruce wrote in RE: Slashdot:  How
> >should Govt sites be designed?:
> >>How does a site claiming Single-A compliance justify a high level link 
>to
> >>Adobe Acrobat Reader?  I did not come across any PDF documents, but lack 
>of
> >>HTML equivalents would be a violation of Guideline 11.
>

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Received on Tuesday, 9 January 2001 21:00:49 UTC