Re: Accessible PDFs?

It will be several years if at all before we can say that pdf is
accessible.  Yes, It is correct to say that There are some circumstances
where in it is possible to provide access to and accessible pdf
documents but those are few in the world and we already have a ton of
formats that are better suited for accessibility.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Scarlett Julian (ED)" <Julian.Scarlett@sheffield.gov.uk>
To: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Monday, December 02, 2002 3:33 AM
Subject: RE: Accessible PDFs?



Bob

that's a less than useful answer in that it doesn't really give a true
picture of the situation. Yes, it's true that AT cannot read pdf
documents
created using Acrobat 4 but (correct me if I'm wrong) it *is* possible
using
version 5 to produce documents that are accessible if the creator knows
what
they're doing. We are now in a situation where pdf holds similar ground
to
html in that unless the developer knows what they're doing the resulting
documents will be inaccessible to some extent. Given that people will
still
continue to use pdf shouldn't we be giving a more upbeat message about
how
to create accessible versions otherwise we're going to be stuck with
documents that theoretically can be made accessible but aren't because
the
creators don't know that it can be done. This is an *interest* group and
to
my mind that means exploring possibilities and trying to produce
solutions.
Or am I yet another who has seriously misjudged the remit of the list?

Julian

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Access Systems [mailto:accessys@smart.net]
> Sent: Monday, December 02, 2002 1:11 AM
> To: Matthew Smith
> Cc: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Accessible PDFs?
>
>
>
> On Mon, 2 Dec 2002, Matthew Smith wrote:
>
> nope, rarely, hardly ever
>
> Bob
>
>
> > Can anyone tell me if Assitive Technologies are able to read PDF
> > documents?  More and more "offline" content is being held
> on web sites
> > in this format, so it would be nice to think that it is actually
> > accessible...
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> > M
> >
> >
>
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Received on Monday, 2 December 2002 06:55:23 UTC