aware-techniques archives | Feb 2002 | new search | results | previous | next |
Accessible pdf documentsby "Rick Nelson/R6/USDAFS" <rhnelson(at)fs.fed.us> |
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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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