Quote:
Originally Posted by Sonist
How is this a uniquely PDF problem? One can import a non-OCR-ed image of a text page into a .doc, or a PlainText document, and it will be equally unreadable by text-to-speech.
|
It's not exactly unique to PDF documents, but PDFs are the most commonly encountered accessibility problem on government websites, which is why they felt the need to review the situation with specific regard to PDFs. And if you take a random sample of 100 PDFs and 100 Word docs from government websites, I can pretty well guarantee that you'll find very very few (if any) Word docs consisting of scanned, non-OCR'ed images, and a fair number of PDFs which are impossible to access except by being able to view them, visually.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sonist
Why do you blame PDFs for the shortcomings of the "sophisticated" (read "very expensive and government subsidized") software and hardware, which cannot do what a free reader can do?
|
Assistive technology is sometimes expensive, sometimes not, is rarely government subsidized, and you seem to think that all a blind person needs is to have stuff read out. That's pretty well all Adobe reader and other free readers do. Assistive software does far more than that, and when it's unable to access a PDF, nor will a free reader be able to do so.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sonist
As to "DTP packages" (I am assuming you mean a more complex, visual layout), I doubt it is a large problem for government documents, which generally look like ..., well, government documents.
|
There are loads of newsletters, fact sheets, department annual reports, etc, which are produced within local and central government using Acrobat, InDesign and other DTP packages, but without appropriate training for staff, they're produced with little regard for accessibility.
/Edit to add/
No, I don't mean "a more complex, visual layout". I mean created in a manner which results in individual elements on the page being positioned independently of each other (individual paragraphs, headings, sub-headings, image captions, etc), but not tagged correctly to indicate the semantic structure of the page and the correct reading order, and not properly reflowable. One could create two visually identical PDFs, one accessible and the other not. "Accessible" doesn't equal "text only", "dull", "boring", "lacking visual appeal" or any of the other similar things you might have been led to believe it means. Just as with web design, it revolves around semantic structure, sensible reading order, and text alternatives for images which are only displayed or read out as required.
/end of edit/
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sonist
And as a policy matter, it is hardly wiser to strip publications which rely on visual appeal of their design attributes, so that blind people can easily listen to them, than it is to ban radio, because deaf people can't hear it....
|
You keep making statements about the report that are simply not true. Where is there
ANY reference in it to stripping publications of their design attributes?!!!
It's clear you believe those with disabilities should stay at home and not expect to be able to do anything ever again if it involves any change on anyone else's part. I refuse to believe that's what the world should or needs to be like. You're determined to believe this is just some sort of scam on the part of the Australian government and Vision Australia, and nothing I or anyone else says is going to change your mind on that. So I'm going to bow out of this discussion here, because if I don't, I'm going to get so bloody angry I'll end up saying something I regret.
- Donna