Discuss: Facts and Opinions About PDF Accessibility
by Joe Clark
- Editorial Comments
22 Using MSWord as an Accessibility Tool
�I know of people with visual impairments that usually copy the text from a website and paste it into MS Word in order to increase font size.�
“Why not use Firefox or Opera? Then they can enlarge the text.”
For the same reason quite a few women (and certain men) wear high heeled shoes when no bone in the human foot was designed for that kind of strain, certain designers prefer to use notepad to Dreamweaver and some people prefer to watch films at home than going to the cinema: people get used to the choices they make when they are in control.
One could easily say, why people still read in Braille when they could have a freeware text-to-speech software installed in a Pentium II get all the classics in TXT format from the Guttenberg Project and spend the afternoons just listening to Shakespeare or Harry Potter instead.
This is the beauty of being human after all, one can hardly distinguish an “a” from a “b” and still they use whatever they have in hand (and in their hard drives) to access the world. Within our limitations we adapt using the resources around us and this is a feat too precious to be weighed against the browser one uses to access the Web or by the technology one could be using instead.
But yes, whenever another opportunity arises, I will be, again, the first one to advise, guide and help whoever needs the help (be them blind or just a novice user) and if they feel comfortable with the challenge, Opera will be the first addtion to their hard drives. But once again, that is just the cold part of the job; the technical elements become such nonsense when you see the face of self-accomplishment when one is able to reconnect with the world, write ‘silly’ poems, send an email, dream.
After all accessibility in its nature is not a property of the digerati or an industry standard but more, a call for human beings in general, since the beginning of history.
posted at 06:19 pm on August 26, 2005 by Luis Morais
23 Accessible PDFs = Text-only
In my 3 years of creating so-called accessible PDFs, I have learned that, between the limited variety of PDF tags and the capabilities of the PDF readers (by that, I am refering to the Read Out Loud functionality of Acrobat or the use of JAWS to read PDFs), the accessibility of PDFs is no better than a text-only page containing the same text. Rather than waste a huge amount of space on this forum, I decided to post my own facts and opinions about PDF accessibility in my blog at http://pen-and-ink.ca/?p=40.
posted at 10:43 pm on August 26, 2005 by Julian Rickards
24 Joe the shrinking violet?
I read Joe’s article with much interest. While it contains a lot that is very pertinent and interesting, I believe his aggressive, combative approach has resulted in a misrepresentation of the conversation he had with Bruce Maguire and the way the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) in Australia operates.
I introduced Joe to Bruce in the lunchroom at the WE04 Conference and was present during the conversation they had regarding PDFs. Joe portrays the conversation as monologue by Bruce with him trying to get a word in edgewise. Joe the shrinking violet unable to get a word in? Come on give me a break! To me it seemed more like an attack on Bruce by Joe, with Bruce desperately trying to get Joe to acknowledge his responses.
This is how I remember the overall nature of the conversation: Joe was mainly interested in making the point that it is now possible to produce PDF documents that can be accessed by screen readers. Bruce agreed with this, but said that many PDF documents are not prepared correctly and a significant proportion of screen reader users in Australia do not use readers that can access even well prepared PDFs. (By the way, the reference to Microsoft Word was a side comment that Word was more accessible to most reader users than PDF).
In essence, it was a classic dispute between a theoretician and a person who has to deal with something in a practical way on a daily basis. I knew the conversation was off the rails when Joe started talking about how if HREOC took someone to court over the use of PDFs, he would willing be an expert witness against Bruce (and HREOC) to say PDFs were accessible (no if, buts or maybes!).
Protecting the rights of people with disabilities can be a difficult and unpopular task, and advances in technology often add another dimension to the problem. A quick, non-web example: In Australia, builders of large multi-story buildings are required to provide a lift (elevator) with buttons that are positioned so that they can be used by someone in a wheelchair. An increasing number of disabled people now have wheelchairs that can elevate the user up to the level of a standing adult. Does this mean that a person in a standard wheelchair can no longer claim they are being discriminated against if the buttons in all the lifts are too high for them to reach? Should we change the requirement to provide buttons at wheelchair height?
It is not a question of what is theoretically possible or not, or a question of how much a piece of hardware or software might cost. Minimising the discrimination against people with disabilities is a question of basic rights. Unlike Joe, I do not believe the people of Australia “struggle under the yoke of lies and misunderstandings� from HREOC about PDFs or any other matter.
I know there is nothing like making a stir to attract a bit of attention. But, I feel it is sad that in his desire for the spotlight, Joe has found it necessary to attack someone who has done much in the fight to advance the rights of people with disabilities.
posted at 12:53 am on August 27, 2005 by Roger Hudson
25 Paging Roger Hudson!
In fact, Bruce did monologuize endlessly and I barely did get a word in edgewise. Joe is not a shrinking violet and tried many, many times to interrupt Bruce’s oft-inaccurate lecturing. Everything I wrote about HREOC and my Australian experience is true and accurate. It’s great that we have a slightly-differing eyewitness account, but I was the one trying to do the talking, not Roger.
The issue of “my device doesn’t read your accessible PDF” is a separate question, one addressed in my article. I also specifically and factually addressed the true cost of software to read PDFs, which can be zero. Nobody has ever “minized” the cost of such software; Bruce and HREOC are guilty of the opposite, exaggerating it. I researched the facts and reported them.
The fact that “many documents are not prepared correctly” is only one part of the puzzle, as it is for Web pages. I explained why in the article. An untagged PDF may still be accessible. The non-Web example is off-topic; standing-height wheelchairs are not readily available or cheap, while PDF readers are.
I certainly would return to Australia to testify in a hearing, at which point the exact contentions of plaintiff and respondent would be discussed. I didn’t tell Bruce I would categorically argue that PDFs are accessible, because they are no more categorically accessible than HTML is. Bruce did, however, tell me they’d get in competing experts who said PDFs weren’t accessible. As I told him then and reiterate now, the difference is I’ll have the facts.
posted at 01:38 pm on August 27, 2005 by Joe Clark
26 Paging M.S. Word users
The tendency for low-vision users to compensate for lousy page design by copying and pasting text into Word has been documented by at least two studies I’ve read, including one by Theofanos and Redish. Zoom layouts solve the problem. Or will, once retail sites start using them.
posted at 01:40 pm on August 27, 2005 by Joe Clark
27 My Appologies
It has come to my attention that my fact checking was incomplete: the true facts negate some of the conclusions I made and I appologize to any/all who had read my own opinions on PDF accessibility.
posted at 01:57 pm on August 27, 2005 by Julian Rickards
28 XML(-like)
Yes, I think PDF tags actually are XML, but I also think that they’re in a separate category from the XML inputs that were mentioned in the comment.
Could one of my esteemed colleagues from Adobe clarify that, please?
posted at 02:03 pm on August 27, 2005 by Joe Clark
29 Newshound?
Hold on. I just noticed that Roger Hudson essentially accuses me of hogging some kind of limelight at the expense of poor downtrodden Bruce Maguire. Sadly, no!
Do a Google search for Maguire vs. SOCOG and see whose name comes up. Bruce’s victory against the Sydney Olympics is a notable precedent in Web accessibility that I extensively documented – because it’s important. Far be it from me to “minimi[ze] the discrimination against people with disabilities.” When did I start doing that?
Is it just barely possible, Roger, that Bruce shouldn’t coast on his reputation, that his friends shouldn’t mistake reputation for accuracy, and that I’m not trying to boost my own reputation?
I just wrote an article about PDFs. If this is so great for my reputation, when is it gonna start getting me dates?
posted at 06:39 pm on August 27, 2005 by Joe Clark
30 Court Documents
Working in a bankruptcy law firm, I have to access the courts’ systems every day to get “archived” copies of documents associated with a particular case. I do so by clicking on a link in a very basic HTML 4.1 page (beside the point), and depending on the court, Adobe Acrobat eventually opens with the document I chose. For the most part, the documents that come up would be a nightmare to reproduce in HTML; row & column spanning cells, mandatory headers & footers, time sensitive dates, etc.
As far as I can tell, your list of exempt PDF situations doesn’t include situations like the one I outlined above, at least not specificallly.
Otherwise, great article. It always feels so good to prove the greedy nay-sayers wrong.
posted at 06:06 am on August 28, 2005 by Matthew Reed
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21 Untitled
“I’m with Joe: accessibility is about people with disabilities. Full stop.”
Nonsense. Accessibility should mean “access for all”. If a local cinema has a ramp and a large automatically-opening entrance door for wheelchairs, but non-disabled people have to climb two flights of narrow winding stairs to get in (through a tiny door that sometimes doesn’t open easily and is always a tight squeeze), then the cinema is not what non-disabled people might class “accessible”. A poor example but hopefully you get the point. Accessibility doesn’t mean “it also works for disabled people”, but that it is “accessible” (as far as possible). Full stop.
“I know of people with visual impairments that usually copy the text from a website and pastes it into MS Word in order to increase font size.”
Why not use Firefox or Opera? Then they can enlarge the text.
(From the main article:) “You can add XML-like tags to give structure to a PDF.” / “PDF tags are XML-like.”
As far as I can tell, PDF tags are actual XML, not XML-like. I’ve learnt of two main reasons for them so far, but there may be others. One is to enable importing of XML, the other exporting. This means you can create a PDF template, for example a design for a menu. When your prices or products change, you can update the XML and not have to redesign a whole new template, or spend ages editing an existing one. Exporting gives you a standard XML document containing all your text and links to images etc in a way that can be reformatted any way you like (eg: turned into HTML).
I have followed the advice in the article to view tags, but it seems the Standard version of Adobe Acrobat 7 isn’t capable of some things mentioned. I only have a “Quick Check” option, and there’s no Tags palette! (There is, however in InDesign CS2.) So I was not able to view the tags after adding them to a PDF. As Joe rightly says “for some functions you need the Pro version”.
posted at 09:50 am on August 26, 2005 by Chris Hester