[gui-talk] Fwd: Article: Australian Government gives Thumbs down to PDF
Steve Pattison
srp at internode.on.net
Mon Dec 6 13:56:27 UTC 2010
From: Janelle Colquhoun jc at salubriousproductions.com
To: VIP-L vip-l at freelists.org
www.itnews.com.au/News/240304,government-gives-thumbs-down-to-pdf-format.aspx
Government gives thumbs down to PDF format
By
John Hilvert
on Dec 1, 2010 10:39 AM (2 days ago)
Filed under
Software
Adobe's document format lacks accessibility, says AGIMO.
The central IT office of Australia's Federal Government has requested that
agencies consider the use of alternative file formats to Adobe's PDF.
The advice follows a study which found that while accessibility of the
Portable Document Format (PDF) has improved over time and remains a popular
format
for many organisations, it was less accessible to visually-impaired users.
Published by the Australian Government Information Management Office
(AGIMO), "
The Australian Government's study into the Accessibility of the Portable
Document Format for people with a disability,"
concluded that if PDF was used, accessible alternative file formats should
be made available.
While the use of PDF files was prolific and preferred over other formats,
the study also found that:
. 80 percent of respondents do not complement the use of PDF files without
alternate formats;
. PDF files are used by a wide variety of organisations but those are blind
or have low vision experience many problems with multi-column designs;
. Screen readers are unable to interact with a document saved as an
image-only PDF file because images are not accessible to people who are
blind.
. Employing workaround methods to access inaccessible PDF files results in a
degraded experience when compared to accessing equivalent documents in other
formats.
Copyright © iTnews.com.au
Regards Steve
Email: srp at internode.on.net
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