Hi, all.
I received the following reply from Liz McQuarrie to my inquiry re a DOS
viewer for PDF files (already distributed to this list). As indicated,
she has some questions and is soliciting feedback. I urge those
interested to send replies to her at the indicated address and to CC the
NFB-RD list to stimulate discussion.
Forwarded message:
>From mv.us.adobe.com!lmcquarr Wed Jul 12 08:10:40 1995 remote from pacifier
From: lmcquarr@mv.us.adobe.com
Date: Wed, 12 Jul 95 08:01:09 pst
Message-Id: <9506128055.AA805561269@signum.mv.us.adobe.com>
To: mikef@pacifier.com
Cc: lmcquarr@mv.us.adobe.com
Subject: Re: Accessible PDF Docs for the Blind
Hi Mike -- Thank you for the feedback. I have
some answers for you below (look for >> for answers/comments).
I also have some questions!
It turns out that Adobe will probably do the DOS
solution for PDF. Right now, we are trying to figure out what
that solution should be. Attached to the end of this document
is a Proposal that we are floating around as to what the
solution on DOS should be. I would really appreciate your
feedback. We want to make sure we do the right thing. Also,
feel free to forward the proposal to anyone else that you
think could provide us some feedback.
Liz McQuarrie
Acrobat Engineering
P.S. Are you going to be attending the Microsoft
Accessibility Summit in Redmond, WA this coming weekend? If so,
I will meet you there.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Subject: Accessible PDF Docs for the Blind
From: mikef@pacifier.com at cc_smtp5
Date: 7/11/95 10:29 AM
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.
>> Please see my proposal regarding minimum configuration
>> issues. We have a trade-off to make as far as the
>> availability of a solution versus the minimum configuration
>> it could run on. Perhaps we can do a release that runs on
>> the 386 with 4 megabytes and some time later, release a
>> version that runs on a 286 with a megabyte. I really
>> doubt that we could get it to run in less than that.
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.
>> Yes, this is true. We are building both based on the
>> same underlying technology that "infers" structure in PDF
>> at this time.
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.
>> Since structure in PDF is a 1996 project (shipping in 1996),
>> it is difficult for me to say for sure exactly what we will
>> do then. I think we are still looking for feedback as to
>> how big the DOS market will be in 1996 for the visually disabled.
>> Steve Zilles and myself have been calling all over the place
>> trying to get information about where visually disabled
>> computer users are going to be a year from now.
>> One thing I feel very sure about: If DOS continues to be
>> a primary platform for the visually disabled, and these
>> people are *using* the DOS viewing solution that we have
>> provided that is based on the "infer structure" technology,
>> than I believe Adobe will do the right thing and upgrade it
>> to keep up with the new structure in the file format.
>> One of the reasons that I personally work for Adobe is that
>> I believe in our corporate social conscience. John Warnock
>> and Chuck Geschke, our CEO and President respectively, are
>> the kind of people that you would be proud to have in your
>> family!
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?
>> I actually am not sure what you mean by this question.
>> Our long term goal is to help ensure that Adobe does not
>> have to display a document in a special window in order
>> for screen readers to access it in a useable way. This
>> is based on feedback that I got: There is no such thing
>> as "separate, but equal." In order to meet this goal,
>> however, the operating system hooks for screen readers need
>> to be rich enough to capture some semantic information about
>> a document. For example:
>> "This text is part of a table, and it is the third
>> cell on the fourth row of a five-row table".
>> That is why I am going to the Microsoft conference.
>> For DOS, I doubt that there will be much further development
>> in this direction. If Adobe ships the DOS Lynx solution
>> as proposed below, certainly both sighted and non-sighted
>> individuals should be able to use it.
Thanks in advance for any answers you can give and for your
attention to this important matter.
>> It is actually quite unusual for Adobe to be quite so
>> forthcoming about our plans. I did this in order to get
>> feedback from the visually disabled community and advocates.
>> Thank *you* for the feedback!
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.**************BEGINNING OF PROPOSAL***************************************
Access to PDF for the Visually Disabled on DOS: A Proposal
Liz McQuarrie and Steve Zilles Adobe Systems Incorporated Rev B, July 10, 1995
Background Information
We at Adobe have heard estimates ranging from seventy to eighty percent of visually disabled computer users are using DOS versus other operating systems. Even though Windows screen readers are becoming increasing popular, we at Adobe have heard that there will continue to be many visually disabled persons using DOS a year from now and more.
Adobe currently has an Acrobat reader for viewing PDF on DOS. It unfortunately can not work with DOS screen readers for the following reason: DOS has two types of modes when viewing the display -- you can view text, usually 80 columns by 24 or 25 lines, or graphics. The DOS screen readers are designed to work with the text mode of the display. Acrobat documents, however, are very visually rich and include images and complex layout with multiple columns and rotated text. The DOS Acrobat Reader, therefore, uses the graphics mode of DOS to present a graphical image of the document. If a PDF document is to be viewed on DOS in a way that will work with DOS screen readers, it must be translated to another format. One possible format to translate the document to would be ASCII.
A final observation: Most people, including the visually disabled, prefer not to learn an entirely new application program in order to read a document. If a PDF document must be translated to work with DOS screen readers, it makes sense to translate it to a format that can be used with a popular application.
The Proposal
Because PDF document must be translated to be viewed on DOS in text mode, and because most computer users are or will be soon using a web browser, we propose to translate the PDF documents to HTML and use the popular DOS web browser, Lynx, to view the file. Further, in order to ensure a seamless integration, Adobe proposes to license the source code for Lynx from the University of Kansas, modify the source code to recognize a PDF document and translate it to HTML on-the-fly for viewing. Adobe would then distribute modified Lynx free of charge through several channels, and the product would be supported by Adobe.
For users who do not have access to the World Wide Web, but still wish to view a PDF document on DOS, note that all web browsers, including Lynx, can be used to view files that are on a local hard drive, local area network drive or CD ROM drive.
Minimum Configuration Proposal
Ideally, this modified version of Lynx would run the same minimum configuration as DOS Lynx. The current version of Lynx runs on an Intel (or equivalent) 8086 processor with 512K of free memory.
The Acrobat 2.0 (the currently shipping Acrobat), however, requires at least an Intel (or equivalent) 80386 processor with four megabytes of memory. In the past, engineering work had been done in an attempt to bring the minimum memory configuration down to one megabyte. This work had to abandoned when the performance proved to be unacceptable.
Finally, to attempt again to engineer an Acrobat product that would run on less than a 386 with minimal memory would require a significant amount of development time, approximately six to eight months. Shooting for this low-end target as a minimum configuration would therefore cause delays in the availability of any solution for the visually disabled who use DOS.
Our proposal, therefore, for a minimum configuration for the DOS Lynx Web browser with the PDF translator would be an Intel (or equivalent) 80386 with two megabytes of memory.
Comments to:
Liz McQuarrie Adobe Systems Incorporated lmcquarr@adobe.com 415-962-3915
Steve Zilles Adobe Systems Incorporated szilles@adobe.com 415-962-4766
-- 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.
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