Australian Government gives PDF thumbs down

[sabredog]

A short but interesting article regarding a report originating out of the Australian Federal government's IT department.

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/240304...df-format.aspx

I wonder what alternatives to PDF documents they would consider?

[KenJackson]

Maybe they are pushing for .epub!

[Adjust]

I don't see what alternative could be...heaven forbid they move back to .doc files...*gulp*

[sabredog]

Certainly a format that allows easy read aloud options.

[rogue_librarian]

If they are worried about accessibility I don't think .doc is very likely. Perhaps some XML based format, (X)HTHML even.

[Zetmolm]

When it comes to accessibility, PDF (as a format) is not worse than many other formats. The issue is how you create your PDF. E.g. one small tick in a checkbox will make your PDF reflowable, but apparently most creators of PDFs leave that checkbox blank.

[Bikeridr]

And the fun thing about the whole story is that the main report can be downloaded as:
PDF_study.pdf
And the supplementary report as:
PDF_study_Supplement.pdf


Clicky

[DMSmillie]

Ah, but it's also available as a series of web pages (which I'd assume/hope have been created in compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and therefore will be accessible to assistive technologies).

If you follow the links back, you'll see that this report stems from the Australian Government's "Web Accessibility National Transition Strategy" and, from my experience working in web accessibility here in the UK, most likely results from the tendency of local and national government departments to produce documents in PDF format and then put them on their website, without making the same content available in any other format (not even web pages). The underlying problem is that, more often than not, those producing various documents within a local authority or a government department are far removed from any awareness of web/document accessibility issues, but the web team don't have the time/staff resources to do all the work of making such documents accessible or converting them into alternative formats. So stuff ends up going up on the web as a PDF and nothing else. The problem that these web teams face is getting sufficient "buy in" from senior management to ensure appropriate training for staff in other departments, and sufficient resources to enable the web team to ensure that everything that goes up on the website is optimised for accessibility, either by creating accessible documents in the first place, or being able to create alternative formats to sit alongside the original documents.

I can foresee similar issues for large publishers, as ebooks become more and more "mainstream", and the requirement that the formats used for ebooks should be accessible to assistive technologies grows. This is just a guess on my part, but I suspect that, if anything is likely to push Amazon towards the EPUB format, it'll be growing pressure towards accessibility, and right now, EPUB is more likely to offer that than MOBI.

- Donna

[DMSmillie]

Because MS Office is so widely used, particularly in business, many assistive technologies are actually very adept at working with .doc files (they have to be, if they hope to have any chance of being purchased for use in the workplace). Then, when you factor in the way in which Word and PDF documents are most commonly created, you do end up with a situation where a Word doc is more likely to be accessible to those using some form of assistive technology than a PDF document.

- Donna

[paaThaka]

Finally somebody sees the light.

The fact that there are still software companies who've build almost a monopoly (>90% market share) by the sheer force of file format obsfucation is just silly.

This is the 2010s for chrissakes.

XML variants all the way.

[Adjust]

Converting all the existing PDFs across to XML, will be a hellish job, the shear amount of PDF alone which a country government would generate would be huge.

[DMSmillie]

The way to tackle it would be to identify the most accessed documents, and convert those (to whatever alternative format(s) are selected), then convert older/less frequently accessed documents on an ad hoc basis, as people request them. As each document is converted, the accessible version(s) can then be added to the website.

The really difficult thing, and in some respects the most important aspect that needs to be addressed, is changing the "grass roots" processes used within all the various departments and offices in a local authority or government department to create new documents. Unless that's changed, the problem of inaccessible documents being created will continue.

- Donna

[Adjust]

Originally Posted by DMSmillie

The really difficult thing, and in some respects the most important aspect that needs to be addressed, is changing the "grass roots" processes used within all the various departments and offices in a local authority or government department to create new documents. Unless that's changed, the problem of inaccessible documents being created will continue.

- Donna

Agreed. People become set in their ways, and to tell them to do something a certain way, because further on down the line we to do x,y,z to it. When they don't see the end result, will be tough...

[Steven Lake]

PDF is an international standard, so they'll be hard pressed to move away from it since everyone else will demand it. Personally, I think that whoever is making this recommendation is being paid (aka bribed) by a major software company (I can give you three guess who, but you'll probably get it on the first try) to get away from open source standards and towards someone's closed, vendor locked, proprietary standard so that they can rake in the bucks.

It happens a LOT. In fact, it's so common that it's scary. It happened to us at one company I worked at no less than seven times, and every single time it happened, we ended up forking out a big chunk of change for an otherwise inferior system.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Zetmolm

When it comes to accessibility, PDF (as a format) is not worse than many other formats. The issue is how you create your PDF. E.g. one small tick in a checkbox will make your PDF reflowable, but apparently most creators of PDFs leave that checkbox blank.

It depends on what program you use to make the PDF. Tagged/reflowable PDFs are standard (or a standard option) for the ones made from Word docs; they don't happen when made from ABBYY Finereader 7 (I'm not sure about later versions); InDesign probably has it as an option. However, PDFs made from print drivers like CutePDF, instead of Acrobat's distiller, may not have any tagging option, and of course, PDFs made from scans don't have searchable or reflowable text.

Saying "PDFs are/could be reflowable" is a lot like saying "text on paper is readable under normal lighting conditions." It depends on how it was made, and what it was made from.