Re: Accessible Documents - PDF vs. HTML

to get others to "correctly" use authoring accessible pdf documents is as 
hard as teaching them how to write in code. they just won't do it.   heck 
I have a hard enough time getting folks to save word documents in txt 
format.

and remember this unless a closed enviorenment must be cross platform. 
pdf accessibility is hard enough to get to work in latest windows much 
less older versions and other OS...

at least html is more manipiulatative (is that even a word?) by the end 
user who if a adaptive software user may(likely is) more skilled at 
getting stuff to work for them.  and more likely to get it without need 
for mannipulation.

I won't even accept pdf documents if they need to be deseminated.

Bob


On Thu, 16 Jun 2016, Duff Johnson wrote:

> Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2016 10:17:17 +0200
> From: Duff Johnson <duff@duff-johnson.com>
> To: Dean Birkett | AssistiveWare <d.birkett@assistiveware.com>
> Cc: "[utf-8] Olaf Drümmer" <olaflist@callassoftware.com>,
>     J. Albert Bowden <jalbertbowden@gmail.com>,
>     w3c WAI List <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
> Subject: Re: Accessible Documents - PDF vs. HTML
> Resent-Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2016 08:17:57 +0000
> Resent-From: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
> 
> Advising end-users to gain developer-level awareness of relevant technologies - in order to simply author documents - is not at all what the vast majority (99.95%) of users have in mind. I don’t think such a suggestion is responsive to the original question.
>
> Markdown - while cool, useful, powerful etc… can’t really be considered a solution for typical end users. Certainly… I don’t want to be the one to suggest it to them. :-)
>
> The original question requested a comparison of two options: PDF and HTML.
>
> Depending on the complexity of the document and specific needs, creating an accessible PDF may be (typically) accomplished by…
>
> a) Using techniques for accessible authoring (correct use of styles, alt. text, etc.). This is itself as major challenge - and the only appropriate challenge for end-users.
>
> b) Exporting the resulting document from MS Word or OpenOffice (as an example of free software that makes tagged PDF).
>
> So…  what is the equivalent end-user product / workflow for authoring accessible HTML documents?
>
> Based on the recommendations to use HTML this seems like a fairly reasonable question.
>
> Duff.
>
>
>> On Jun 16, 2016, at 09:24, Dean Birkett | AssistiveWare <d.birkett@assistiveware.com> wrote:
>>
>> Learning Markdown might be a simpler solution. Yes, it is still something that has to be learned, but it is a lot simpler to write than HTML and it will be prone to less errors. https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/basics
>>
>>
>>> On 16 Jun 2016, at 07:56, Olaf Drümmer <olaflist@callassoftware.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Are you kidding?
>>>
>>> In all politeness, this is a completely unacceptable approach for most users. You are implying that one would have to learn to write HTML syntax (and if one would want to go beyond barebones presentation, CSS for styling etc., and then probably also the occiasonal ARIA attribute here and there). Can you envision any average Word user doing that? Most Word users are already struggling when someone asks them to use styles (as opposed to local formatting).
>>>
>>> Or am I missing something?
>>>
>>> Please come up with something more realistic.
>>>
>>> Olaf
>>>
>>> .
>>>> On 16.06.2016, at 05:14, J. Albert Bowden <jalbertbowden@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> tools for working with HTML: any editor....literally any editor. you can use notepad in windows even! and i mean notepad, not notepad++, simply save the .txt document as .html instead.
>>>>
>>>> jedit has been my go to for nearly a decade now, sublime text is probably one of the most popular on the market, atom is editor created by github, brackets was created by adobe....just to name a few.
>>>>
>>>> tools for creating accessible HTML documents: w3c validators, tenion.io, accessibility project's resouces: http://a11yproject.com/resources.html and w3c's web accessibility evaluation tools https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/, to name a few.
>>>>
>>>> pro tip: using HTML properly will get you closer to accessible than anything else...not to take away from some of these tools, but properly using HTML reinforces accessibility, because HTML has some accessibility already baked in.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 3:33 PM, Olaf Drümmer <olaflist@callassoftware.com> wrote:
>>>> It seems there is some agreement that HTML is  a good option, but Word is not the right tool to create HTML.
>>>>
>>>> Can anybody share which tools they use to make their accessible HTML files?
>>>>
>>>> Olaf
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> J. Albert Bowden II
>>>>
>>>> jalbertbowden@gmail.com
>>>>
>>>> http://bowdenweb.com/
>>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
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