Accessible PDF Docs for the Blind

From: Mike Freeman (mikef@pacifier.com)
Date: Tue Jul 11 1995 - 10:30:50 PDT

Hi, Liz!

I am a member of the Research and Development (R&D) Committee of
the National Federation of the Blind (NFB); NFB is the largest
organization of the blind in the United States. I am writing to
thank you for disseminating the document describing Adobe's plans
to make Acrobat and PDF-formatted documents accessible to the
blind. If those plans become reality, many blind persons may be
able to rest a little easier knowing that they will not be
completely cut off from access to at least the textual material
in PDF-formatted documents.

I am glad to see that, in addition to the pluggin accessibility
product for Acrobat for MS-Windows, there will be available an
Acrobat text-reader for the MS-DOS environment and that it will
be freely available. In my opinion, while great progress has been
made toward making the MS-Windows environment accessible via
speech or refreshable Braille display, none of the screen-reading
products currently available for this environment have yet
achieved the level of quality or reliability available to the
user of screen-reading software in the MS-DOS environment. In
addition, most, if not all, screen-readers for the MS-Windows
environment are relatively expensive and therefore may be
out-of-reach for many blind persons using computers at home.
Thus, I believe it essential that the Acrobat text viewer for the
MS-DOS environment be made available as soon as possible.

You intimate that, due to the limited knowledge of document
structure currently available in PDF format, even the initial
release of the pluggin accessibility product for the MS-Windows
environment will have difficulty presenting some material to the
blind user in a logical manner. I presume this will also hold for
the Acrobat text reader in the DOS environment. If and when the
PDF format is enhanced to provide the capability of describing
document structure such that the pluggin accessibility product
will be able to present material in a manner which makes sense,
will the DOS Acrobat text reader also be enhanced to be able to
use the imbedded structure information to display things in a
logical manner? If this is not the case, I strongly urge that it
be considered.

One final question: in both the MS-Windows and DOS environments,
if/when document structure queues are designed into the PDF
format and accessibility products are redesigned to use this
information for logical presentation via speech and/or
refreshable Braille display, what will become of the visual
display? Will it remain comprehensible to the sighted viewer?

Thanks in advance for any answers you can give and for your
attention to this important matter.

Regards, 

-- 
Mike Freeman            |       Internet: mikef@pacifier.com
GEnie: M.FREEMAN11      |       Amateur Radio Callsign: K7UIJ
/* PGP2.6.2 PUBLIC KEY available via finger or PGP key server */
... Bureaucrats cut red tape -- lengthwise.

This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Dec 02 2012 - 01:30:03 PST