By Janina Sajka, Director, Technology Research and Development, American Foundation for the Blind, and Joe Roeder, Senior Access Technology Specialist, National Industries for the Blind
Available online at http://www.afb.org/info_document_view.asp?documentid=1706
"Presently, Adobe distributes end user agents which incorporate accessibility support for 32-bit Windows environments. Adobe also distributes PDF readers for other platforms, but without accessibility features. Many persons who are blind or otherwise print disabled use other operating environments (such as Macintosh and UNIX) and they are effectively without access as defined in Section 508. The principle attraction of PDF is that it is platform neutral, allowing documents to be created with the confidence that they can be printed with identical appearance from any computer. The lack of access for some disability groups calls this notion of platform neutrality into question and should be a concern for government procurement officials until this situation is corrected."
National Center on Accessible Information Technology in Education Accessible Information Technology Series (AccessIT)
Available online at http://www.washington.edu/accessit
"PDF accessibility also requires that assistive technology (AT) vendors build support into their products and that consumers purchase current upgrades of AT that supports accessible PDF. Two of the most popular screen readers, JAWS and Window-Eyes, currently claim to support the new PDF. Freedom Scientific (http://www.freedomscientific.com)has built PDF support into JAWS 3.7 and higher, and GW Micro (http://www.gwmicro.com) has built PDF support into Window-Eyes 4.1 and higher. Currently, there is no accessibility support for PDF in non-Windows operating systems."
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/acrobat6_508M.html
Addressing the part of Section 508 that reads: "l) When electronic forms are used, the form shall allow people using Assistive Technology to access the information, field elements, and functionality required for completion and submission of the form, including all directions and cues."
"This functionality is delivered via the MSAA API on the Windows platform. No comparable standard existed on the Macintosh platform during the development of Acrobat 6.0."
Addressing the part of Section 508 that reads: "(f) Textual information shall be provided through operating system functions for displaying text. The minimum information that shall be made available is text content, text input caret location, and text attributes. "
"Adobe Acrobat 5.0 for Windows provides textual information through the MSAA API including text content and text input caret location. Text attributes are not supported. No comparable standard for exposing focus programmatically existed on the Macintosh platform during the development of Acrobat 5.0. Adobe provides free online PDF-to-text, or PDF-to-HTML conversion services for users that can't take advantage of MSAA tools on the Window platform. In addition Macintosh users can export tagged Adobe PDF files to RTF, XML, HTML, or text."
Addressing the part of Section 508 that reads: "Interaction with electronic forms (l) When electronic forms are used, the form shall allow people using assistive technology to access the information, field elements, and functionality required for completion and submission of the form, including all directions and cues. "
"Adobe Acrobat 5.0 for Windows and Macintosh enables people with motor impairments, low vision and other disabilities excluding blindness, to interact with, complete and submit forms through the use of keyboard navigation. For people with blindness, Adobe Acrobat 5.0 for Windows enables screen readers to access the information, field elements and functionality required for completion and submission of Adobe PDF forms when those forms have been authored in a manner that optimizes them for accessibility. This functionality is delivered via the MSAA API on the Windows platform. No comparable standard existed on the Macintosh platform during the development of Acrobat 5.0."