Yesterday at Internet World our PDF expert Hugh Huddy spoke on a panel about “PDF Documents & Web Accessibility – What you need to know if you have PDF on your website”. Joining him on the panel was Struan Robertson, a senior associate at Pinsent Masons and the editor of IT law Web site Out-law.com, Jon Gooday from AbilityNet and Fergus Brady from Riverdocs.
The whole issue around PDF and accessibility has been running for years and we have always asked that people create accessible PDF’s according to the Access Adobe guidelines, avoid putting key information or scanned images of text in PDF, provide accessible alternatives where possible (in HTML, Word or text) as well as provide links to the Adobe Online PDF conversion tool on web pages where PDF’s can be downloaded from. In this press release Hugh clarifies what should be done when using PDF’s while Straun discusses how inaccessible PDF could fall foul of the law under the 2005 Disability Discrimination Act (DDA):
“The legal duty is to provide the information in a way that is accessible and usable. Many PDFs are not accessible and the solution is to provide accessible HTML in addition to PDFs, if you wish to use PDFs.”
This clearly underpins the necessity for producing accessible PDF’s in all circumstances as described by Access Adobe and if this isn’t possible looking at producing an accessible alternative.
Read the whole article PDFs fail on accessibility, says lawyer on Out-Law.com.
Adrian Higginbotham | 03/05/2007 at 13:50 | Permalink
I have to say I don’t entirely agree with the findings of the article. of course accessible information is essential but I don’t think that pdf has to equal an accessibility barrier. The danger with pieces like this is that people will see html equals accessibility and so stop trying to improve the access of their PDFs. .PDF files serve a particular and different purpose to html pages a purpose of which I often have a need so I for one don’t want to see html replace pdf. indeed pdfs aren’t always perfect but if we encourage people to give up on them now then they’ll never get any better. are we still advocating text only web pages? - no, there’s a reason for that.
Henny | 03/05/2007 at 16:24 | Permalink
Hi Adrian,
No one is suggesting doing away with PDF because, as you correctly point out, they serve a particular and different purpose to HTML. They are after all intended for print not reading online.
In an ideal world PDF should be an addition to what is already available on the website providing a suitable printable format for that information.
The same goes for text versions of websites. By all means have one but it is not an alternative to making the main website accessible but rather an add-on to what should already be an accessible website.
Henny
Adrian Higginbotham | 03/05/2007 at 21:22 | Permalink
certainly text only pages used to be an alternative 5 or more years ago. I’m not sure any of us would look so kindly nowadays on any organisation that opted for that route in the current climate. A kind comparison might suggest that pdf accessibility today is in a similar position to that of Website accessibility in .99 but look how long its taken for the Web to move on - do we really want to encourage those businesses out there producing electronic materials for offline reading to take the same route that we did. sure we’re getting somewhere now but I’d be disappointed if I didn’t think the one thing we have learned is that there must be a better way. yes those of you who publish in .pdf make sure that your information is accessible but remember also that an alternative version is intended to give an equivalent means of accessing the same experience. For me at least a document which can freely be copied, edited, and can only be read online is not an equivalent. Fail to give me access and I’ll be after you as fast as Struan, Hugh, or the other panellists but I do disagree with the contention that html is the best alternative to pdf.
Graham Robbins | 15/05/2007 at 17:44 | Permalink
The portability of PDF files rightly makes them a popular format so it’s
clear that accessibility issues must be considered. The article hints at
the underlying issue when it says “it is very easy to put that document
up online” - PDF documents are created by the wrong department.
Whereas most web content for a large organisation goes past one or more
web developers with an understanding of accessibility - PDF documents
can be produced by anyone and probably uploaded through a CMS without a developer in sight.
SiteMorse - a UK automated site testing service - can routinely test for
the accessibility of a site’s PDF documents and verify the links inside
work.
During one of their recent surveys nearly three quarters of PDF
documents hosted on the websites of FTSE 100 companies had accessibility issues - a problem far greater in the US where just over 11% of tested PDF files passed accessibility checks:
http://www.sitemorse.com/survey