[Irl-dean] Equal Citizens: Proposals for Core Elements of Disability Legislation

[Barry McMullin]

Brenda Delaney wrote:

BD> To date the NDA website policy has been to provide
BD> documents in both PDF and RTF. Due to resource
BD> limitations it is not always possible to publish
BD> accessible HTML versions with the given timeframe.

and, separately, mmaguire at connect.ie said:

MM> It would be good to get comments on the accessibility or
MM> otherwise of acrobat....as this can be fed back to the
MM> developer community.

This response will be fairly brief, as I am not sure it is of
wide interest to the whole list; but if anyone wishes a more
detailed discussion, please feel free to contact me directly.
Further, it is all one person's experience and opinion - so your
mileage may vary!

Firstly, let me acknowledge that Adobe has invested very
considerable effort in improving the accessibility of PDF
technology, both authoring (Acrobat) and reading (Acrobat
Reader).  They deserve recognition for this level of engagement
and committment.

Having said that, these efforts are no "magic bullet" (as Adobe
themselves fully recognise).  It does potentially add some
significant additional flexibility in reading (magnification,
text reflow, enhanced contrast control, integration with selected
assitive technologies etc.).  Further, if the PDF has been
authored to include structural information, this can be used to
enhance document navigation. This is all extremely welcome - but,
of course, it is only playing "catch-up" with what HTML already
offers in much more established, and widely deployed form.  And,
at the end of the day, if you have an authoring environment that
can deliver well-structured PDF (which is what is necessary to
actually deliver PDF "accessibility") then it should just as easily,
and automatically, deliver well-structured HTML.  And the latter
will offer a lot of additional benefits.

So, improved PDF accessibility may be an argument for offering
PDF as one digital format among a number of choices; but it is no
argument at all for presenting PDF as a sole or primary digital
format.

Accordingly, any of you who have visited my own site at:

  http://eaccess.rince.ie/

will notice that I generally offer substantial "report-style"
resources in both HTML and PDF.  The HTML is there as the primary
"accessible" format - providing the maximum portability and
flexibility for user needs.  The PDF is there only in a secondary
role, for the specific benefit of users who want high quality
hardcopy - but it works extremely well for that purpose.

I can afford to do this (and I assure you that, if the NDA
resources for this sort of thing are "limited", then mine are
non-existent!) only because I author in a "source" format, which
contains high quality structural information, which can then be
translated, completely automatically, to both accessible HTML and
PDF. My particular toolchain is a little arcane, and I will not
bore you with the details (though it has the undoubted benefit of
being zero cost).  But this general technology approach is
certainly not rocket science, and something that any but the
smallest of organisations could and should adopt.

Anyway, here's something a bit more concrete and - hopefully -
constructive.  Anyone who wishes can now check out a reasonably
well marked up HTML version of the document that sparked this
whole discussion - "Equal Citizens: Proposals for Core Elements
of Disability Legislation" - at:

http://eaccess.rince.ie/white-papers/2003/dlcg-feb-2003/DLCG.html

It's on me - enjoy!

Finally, I'd like to comment on what I think is a subtle
background issue in this whole discussion.

It seems to me that many organisations "discover" PDF as an
"easy" way of doing web publishing without significantly
modifying their existing authoring tools and processes.  And it
"works": users see exactly what the content authors intended them
to see, and in the way they intended them to see it.  "What you
see is what you get." This is in contrast to trying to publish in
HTML form, which is - for many content authors - extremely
counter-intuitive and dis-orienting: "what you see is almost
never what you get".  And making the HTML "accessible" adds a
further layer of complexity.

Except, of course, that many users can't "see" - not, at least,
to the same level as the content authors and publishers.  And
then the whole house of cards collapses.

As I have indicated, it *is* now possible to author PDF in a way
that is flexibly accessible to users with a wide variety of
disabilities.  But in order to achieve that you must change the
authoring environment to embed additional structural information
in the document - just as is required to publish accessible HTML
documents.  So if you do this - if you accept the need to
re-engineer the publishing process - then you lose precisely the
feature that made PDF attractive in the first place!!!

All together, one last time: there is no magic bullet...

Best regards,

- Barry.

-- 
Barry McMullin
http://www.eeng.dcu.ie/~mcmullin/