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acrobat pdf

Creating Usable and Accessible PDFs

Deborah Edwards-Onoro, a key member of Refresh Detroit, has posted an excellent article, Ten Tips for Creating Usable and Accessible PDFs. It has even been highlighted in the Acrobatusers.com News on December 2.

Her ten detailed guidelines are:

  1. Use a structured source document
  2. Save/export document as tagged PDF
  3. Add title, author, subject and keywords
  4. Add bookmarks
  5. Initial view
  6. Specify the reading language
  7. Correct the reading order
  8. Use PDF Optimizer
  9. Enable Adobe Reader features
  10. Check accessibility
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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

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acrobat law pdf

Lawyer warns that PDFs fail on accessibility (UK)

In a recent article on ZDNet UK, a lawyer warns that PDFs fail on accessibility. This is a good reminder that when web accessibility is addressed, many times people fail to make their Acrobat files accessible. So, don’t forget your PDFs!

PDF documents on Web sites and intranets need to be accompanied by accessible HTML or text versions if they are to comply with disability legislation, a leading technology lawyer has claimed.

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acrobat adobe pdf podcast web

Accessible Acrobat (PDF) Files

Guidelines on how to create accessible Adobe Acrobat (a.k.a. PDF) files. Note that Acrobat files should only be used as supplemental content on a web site, not as primary content.

Download Web Axe Episode 19 (Acrobat Files)

Great links:

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acrobat pdf podcast

Accessible PDF (Acrobat) Files

We all know that PDF files (Adobe Acrobat) are very common in the workplace and on the web. Learn how to make them Accessible in this tenth podcast of Web Axe.

Download Web Axe Episode 10

Links:

We know about PDF files. Our PDF converter allows you to convert PDF to Word as well as PDF to Excel so you can use and analyze without retyping.