Categories
"assistive technology" conference law

Web Accessibility Conference (Nov 11-14, Boulder, CO)

The University of Colorado-Boulder is hosting the 11th Annual Accessing Higher Ground Accessible Media, Web and Technology Conference, November 11- 14, 2008.

The main topics include:

  • implementation and benefits of Assistive Technology in the university and college setting
  • legal and policy issues, including ADA and 508 compliance
  • campus media and information resources, including Web pages, accessible

The web site describes the event as:

Disability Services at the University of Colorado at Boulder presents Accessing Higher Ground: Accessible Media, Web and Technology Conference for Education, for Businesses, for Web and Media Designers

Categories
acrobat adobe

Acrobat 9 and Accessibility

As you may know, Acrobat 9 has recently been released. Fortunately for all, making PDFs accessible is even easier than ever.

There’s some good information on the Acrobat 9 accessibility FAQ page, and many accessibility features are explained. Here are the highlights:

  • Acrobat has an OCR text recognition feature that allows you to apply OCR to the scanned pages.
  • The form tools in Acrobat 9 Pro and Acrobat 9 Pro Extended allow you to automatically recognize form fields in PDF files and Microsoft Word documents.
  • Several tools can create tagged PDF files automatically, including: Microsoft Office applications when Acrobat is installed; the most recent versions of Adobe FrameMaker®, InDesign®, LiveCycle Designer ES, and PageMaker®; the Web Capture feature in Acrobat.

Podcast on creating accessible PDFs

[update June 6] Refresh Detroit’s next meetup will feature a presentation on this topic. Acrobat: Features, accessibility, and version 9 – June 18, 2008