Accessible pdf documents

I was looking at a site titled  "Check sites for 508 with audit-edit to=
ols"
at http://www.gcn.com/20_23/s508/16783-1.html and saw the following abo=
ut
Adobe Acrobat 5.0. Seems to answer the question about pdf's being
accessible.


Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format files are the second most common=

file type, after HTML, on federal Web sites.

When some agencies began to panic last spring over Acrobat file
accessibility, Adobe Systems Inc. rose to the occasion, said Pat Sheeha=
n, a
computer specialist for the Veterans Affairs Department's Office of
Information Technology.

Accessibility salute

Sheehan, who is visually disabled, said he tips his hat to Adobe. "At o=
ne
time, I would click on a PDF file and my [software] agent would just sa=
y
'graphic.' I was looking at an image of the text, not the text itself.
Adobe now has a plug-in called Make Accessible. It automatically tags t=
he
document to make the text flow from column to column."

Adobe Acrobat 5.0 also can transform existing Acrobat 4.x PDF files for=

accessibility. I created a single, searchable 30M application, using
Acrobat Capture for optical character recognition and Acrobat 5.0 for
structure. I could deliver the application from a CD-ROM, a network or =
a
Web server.

The Acrobat 5.0 program is itself accessible. It supports Windows scree=
n
readers, high-contrast viewing, text zoom and automatic reflow, as well=
 as
keyboard shortcuts for redundant navigation and function control.

Sheehan, who is president of the national capital chapter of the Americ=
an
Council of the Blind of Maryland, said all Web developers "need to
understand that June 21 wasn't a deadline, it is a beginning."


Seems to answer the question about pdf documents being accessible




Rick Nelson
Umpqua National Forest


Continual vigilance is the price of accuracy.


=

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