Bridging the gap: accessibility & PDF Franck GROSS Business Developer Acrobat Solutions 1 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Agenda Accessibility Drivers Acrobat Accessibility Features What Tags Do Capturing paper Forms Authoring Tools Techniques Additional Resources 2 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Accessibility Drivers Government Mandates Around the World Section 508 - USA Disability Discrimination Act of 1995 – United Kingdom Common Look and Feel (CLF) and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) - Canada Manufacturer/ Industry Standards W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Assistive Technology Improvements – JAWS, Window Eyes, HAL, Zoomtext, Kurzweil etc. Adobe PDF 1.4, Macromedia Flash, Microsoft MSAA Stakeholder Advocacy ACB, AFB, NFB, NCD, RNIB etc… 3 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. United Kingdom: 1995 Disability Discrimination Act The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA) makes it unlawful to discriminate against disabled people in the way in which you provide services Discrimination can take place in two ways by treating a disabled person less favourably by failing to make “reasonable adjustments” so that disabled people can make use of a service The 2001 Special Educational Needs and Disability Act (SENDA) amended the DDA to include education 4 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. 1995 Disability Discrimination Act (cont.) The Disability Rights Commission Code of Practice published February 2002 includes a definition of the term ‘service‘ http://www.drc-gb.org/uploaded_files/documents/2008_223_drc_cop_rights_of_Access.doc A website that offers free information or a commercial product or service to the public is a ‘service’ as defined under the Act e.g, an airline ticket booking service Such websites must conform to web accessibility guidelines e.g. W3C WCAG (World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) This extends to content delivered by the website, including Flash, PDF, QuickTime etc. In January 2006 the DRC and the BSI will publish ‘PAS 78: Guide to Good Practice in Commissioning Accessible Websites’ 5 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Legal action As yet no company or organisation has been sued in a UK court for having an inaccessible web site In July 2003, RNIB pursued two such cases In one case, county court proceedings were issued Both cases were settled out of court “in the best interests of the blind and partially sighted people involved” 6 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. European legislation Accessibility of Public Web Sites – Access for People with Disabilities: Council Resolution 25 March 2002: “Encourages Member States to implement specific and adequately- resourced measures to achieve the underlying objective of the eEurope 2002 Action Plan for accessibility of public web sites at all levels of government” Applicable to central Government and local authorities 7 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. What Does This Mean to Software Applications? Providing applications software … and delivering electronic content … that can be used effectively by people with disabilities Image © RNIB 2005 8 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Uses of Adobe PDF Adobe PDF is a standard for final- form documents on the Web Over 150 worldwide government agencies have adopted Adobe PDF Including thousands of PDF forms Adobe PDF is the de facto standard for electronic documents in the publishing industry Over 1.25BN Adobe Readers distributed 2M downloads per week 20 languages 9 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. The Accessible Electronic Document Logo Title Subtitle Column 1 Scanned image Table Data Column 2 Contains both content and structure 10 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. The Accessible Electronic Document Bookmarks with Hyperlinks Contains navigational aids 11 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. The Accessible Electronic Document Scanned Text Computer Text Contains real text, not just scanned text 12 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. The Accessible Electronic Document “Document language is English” “Image of surface preparation equipment” Correctly defined reading order Contains extra information for the blind or visually disabled Correctly defined reading order of document text and tables Alternate text descriptions for images A defined document language and meaningful form field descriptions 13 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Acrobat Family and PDF View and Print Accessible PDF documents and forms with the following Adobe products: Adobe Reader® 7.0 Acrobat 7.0 Elements Acrobat 7.0 Standard Acrobat 7.0 Professional 14 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Reader 8.0: Built-In Accessibility Accessible installer Detection of assistive technology Such as screen readers / screen magnifiers Wizard to set accessibility options Automatic generation of accessibility information On-the-fly, when necessary Accessible website with user information http://access.adobe.com 15 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Reader 8.0: Built-In Accessibility Alternate reading orders Menu: Edit Æ Preferences Æ Reading Read Aloud Menu: View Æ Read Out Loud Key: Control + Shift + V (Page) Key: Control + Shift + B (Entire Doc.) Auto-Scroll Menu: View Æ Automatically Scroll Key: Control + Shift + H High contrast viewing Menu: Edit Æ Preferences Æ Accessibility Key: Control + K Image © RNIB 2005 16 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Acrobat 8.0 Standard: Accessibility Features Acrobat 8.0 Standard enables the easy creation, exchange, review and approval of accessible PDFs It includes all of the features available with Adobe Reader 8.0 plus: Fast and easy tagging of existing PDF documents Reduce tagged PDF file size for faster downloads Add security while retaining accessibility Add text to scanned pages Export correctly-ordered text from PDF files to Word and XML 18 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Acrobat 8.0 Professional: Accessibility Features Acrobat 8.0 Professional includes all the features available with Reader, and Acrobat 8.0 Standard Includes expert tools to optimise accessibility for PDF documents Review and modify the reflow/ reading order of objects on a page Check and touch up documents for accessibility e.g. adding alternate text Create accessible PDF forms Using dedicated Adobe LiveCycle Designer (Windows only) 19 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. PDF Accessibility: How it works Franck Gross Accessiweb 2006 Cité des sciences et de l’industrie 20 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. The Accessible PDF “Document language is English” PDF maintains the visual integrity of a document But the logical document structure may not follow the drawing order of page objects A truly accessible PDF must unambiguously define document structure “Image of surface This is accomplished by preparation “tagging” page elements equipment” Purely visual elements must carry an alternate text description Correctly defined reading order 21 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. What <TAGS> do Enable document reflow (low vision, limited mobility) Provide a “hook” on which to hang alternative text descriptions Make it possible to modify reading order without changing the document’s appearance Ensure the correct interpretation of tables and interactive features such as form fields, bookmarks, hypertext links, web URLs etc. 22 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. How do I make a tagged PDF? Scanned page? Form? Apply OCR (Optical Character Existing forms can be tagged Recognition) Where no form fields exist, use Treat as legacy PDF form creation methods in Acrobat 7.0 Professional Legacy PDF? Original document? Add Tags Where possible, define document structure in authoring application Add alternate descriptions for graphics and images Otherwise, convert and treat as legacy PDF Check text Reading Order 23 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Scanned page: Document OCR ASSIGNING IDENTIFICATION NUMBERS (IDs): Unique IDs are required for the following report elements: Stacks, Control Devices and Processes. For processes, that means a process ID number may be used only once on all General Process and Evaporative Process Forms. Scanned text Computer text Turns pictures of text to actual text Necessary so that screen reader has something to read 24 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Scanned page: Document OCR in Acrobat Built in OCR (Optical Character Recognition) Acrobat menu: Document> Recognize text using OCR 25 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Forms in PDF Create new PDF forms: Forms tool in Acrobat 8.0 Professional Adobe LiveCycle Designer (available in Acrobat 8.0 Professional, Windows only) Legacy PDF forms can be made accessible Adobe PDF Forms Access 1.0 26 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Legacy PDFs: Step 1 – Check accessibility Advanced Æ Accessibilty Æ Quick Check (Shift-Ctrl-6) Works in Adobe Reader as well as Acrobat Result shows document is not structured 27 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Legacy PDFs: Step 2 – Add Tags Advanced Æ Accessibility Æ Add Tags to Document Results report contains