[Irl-dean] Accessibility of PDF Documents

[Barry McMullin]

On Thu, 11 Sep 2008, Gerry Ellis wrote:

> I wrote a while back that I am in contact with Adobe in relation to the
> accessibility of their products including documents in PDF format.
>
> Please find below some questions I asked and answers from their
> accessibility manager in the States (his answers are preceeded by the
> letters AWK).

Hi all -

Just two very brief comments:

+ In general, the quality of the PDF *content* out there (in
   terms of incorporating proper markup to support AT) is at least
   as bad, and often worse, than the quality of the HTML.  Thus, I
   would have some sympathy with the response you received from
   AWK that mainly blamed poor PDFs for access problems, rather
   than issues with the reader software itself.

+ A significant ongoing issue into the future may be the use of
   PDF digital rights management (DRM) and how this may impact
   accessibility. As it happens I have just this week received a
   document using adobe DRM and (quite aside from any disability
   issues!) it seems to be extremely complicated to access.  It is
   using some new kind of technology that works (via a plugin)
   with reader versions 6 and 7, but not 8 (?). It is associated
   with something Adobe call "digital editions" which seems to be
   a product fork away from the "reader" product; and which is
   incidentally not currently available on the linux platform at
   all. Some information is available here:

   <http://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/>

   Anyway: I would be interested to hear what AWK has to say about
   the roadmap for "digital editions" and accessibility, and how
   this relates (interoperates?) with DAISY. (Bearing in mind here
   that although DAISY originated as a technology for digital
   "talking" books, it is, in fact, perfectly usable for digital
   books and documents with no native audio content at all. So
   DAISY and PDF are very directly competing technologies in many
   applications.)

Best regards - Barry.

PS: (Rant mode on!) I came across this because it turns out this
Adobe DRM technology is being used by the British Library to roll
out "electronic delivery" of copies of scholarly articles etc.
The problem is that the protection is completely ineffective for
its supposed purpose (controlling illegal re-copying), since one
can still simply print, photocopy, re-scan, to one's (criminal)
heart's desire.  But being 100% ineffective for its purpose
wouldn't bother me in itself, *if* it "does no harm"; but it does
lots and lots of harm.  It makes the whole process much more
cumbersome, much more fragile, much more time consuming, doesn't
work at all on linux, and is just a crazy rediculous waste of
money, specifically penalising the law abiding!  Aaaargh!  (Rant
off...)

--
Barry McMullin, Dublin City University
   phone: +353-1-700-5432
   web: http://www.eeng.dcu.ie/~mcmullin/