[Blindmath] Is the PDF format acceptable as an assistivetechnology

Tue Jan 31 09:57:35 UTC 2012

iBooks 2.0 is not going with EPUB3, rather they go with some CSS and
other custom-made Apple templates, that threaten to negatively impact
the EPUB3 adoption somewhat.
I don't have the exact url, but if you go to www.baldurbjarnason.com
.. you can find some very informative blogs on the new iBooks pros and
cons.

On 1/31/12, Michael Whapples <mwhapples at aim.com> wrote:
> Hello Niel,
>
> What was the disappointing announcement from Apple about iBooks? I missed
> that announcement.
>
> Also thanks for the information on PDF, its a shame that things move so
> slow. However even if the technical things were done today, it will still
> take time for people to adopt it, updating pdftex and such or following the
> latest ISO standards.
>
> Michael Whapples
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Neil Soiffer
> Sent: Monday, January 30, 2012 5:46 PM
> To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
> Subject: Re: [Blindmath] Is the PDF format acceptable as an
> assistivetechnology
>
> Since Michael mentioned my name, I'll expand a bit on what he said:
>
> First off, PDF can be made pretty much as accessible as any other format.
> Most people/software don't try, so in general, accessibility is pretty bad
> in PDF.  Maybe five years ago, PDF's tended to be encrypted so that not
> even the text was accessible, but since Adobe changed the default setting,
> that is rarely the case anymore AFAIK.  If, and that's a big if, the PDF is
> properly tagged and a few other rules are followed, then there is very
> little difference between PDF and HTML in terms of accessibility.  I'm on
> the PDF/UA committee that has developed an ISO standard (ISO 14289) for
> what it means for a PDF document to be accessible.  That's going to a vote
> of ISO member countries in a month or so.  We are already working on a
> version 2 of that standard that deals with math and improves table
> accessibility -- that required some changes to the PDF standard itself (ISO
> 32000), and couldn't move forward until that version (ISO 32000-2) advanced
> further in the very long ISO process.  I suspect that like WCAG, this
> standard will get adopted into law in a number of countries so that
> government agencies that put out PDF documents will need to conform to the
> standard.  There are no guarantees on that though.
>
> For math, I have a "proof of concept" version of MathPlayer that works with
> Adobe Acrobat.  It does most everything that MathPlayer+IE does in terms of
> reading math, converting to braille, etc.  It does require proper tagging
> of the math with MathML, and that can only be done by hand at the moment.
> One of the people working on pdftex is working on making pdftex produce
> tagged PDF, and that includes tagging for math.  He's a prof in Australia
> and works on the project in his spare time. It is a tough problem, but he
> has made significant progress and in another year or so, might be at a
> point where he can release his changes.  That would make a big source of
> scientific documents produce accessible PDF.  The other two big sources are
> Word and InDesign.  Getting them to change would likely require either
> market pressure (possible if there's a law mandating accessible PDF) or
> pressure/legal threats from groups like NFB.
>
> All of what I've mentioned is about what may happen and none will change
> the vast amount of inaccessible PDF documents that currently exists.
> Looking towards the future, not counting the disappointing ibooks
> announcement last week from Apple, I think EPUB 3 is where the publishing
> industry is headed.  EPUB 3 is basically HTML5 with a requirement that
> MathML be used for math.  EPUB 3 was designed with accessibility in mind,
> so I think the future looks brighter in terms of accessible books and
> textbooks.
>
> Neil Soiffer
> Senior Scientist
> Design Science, Inc.
> www.dessci.com
> ~ Makers of MathType, MathFlow, MathPlayer, MathDaisy, Equation Editor ~
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 5:07 AM, Michael Whapples <mwhapples at aim.com> wrote:
>
>> There is a lot you have said there.
>>
>> Firstly the main question, is PDF an acceptably accessible format? The
>> answer is, potentially in theory it could be better than it normally is
>> and
>> possibly may be about as good as most other main stream alternatives. On
>> the equations thing, I believe Niel Soyfer from design science may be
>> involved in a project to make equations accessible in PDF, but like most
>> things in this field progress is slow and I don't think anything is
>> confirmed to be included anytime soon. Having said that, in practice it
>> normally falls far below that and is very substandard as the author has to
>> do specific things to make it accessible (many might not) and some tools
>> may simply not support the accessibility stuff anyway (eg. many of the
>> non-adobe PDF creation tools).
>>
>> <snip>
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