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Who cannot read your Acrobat documents?
You might be surprised.
Attention, DHHS managers and all who create PDF documents
Article from Employee Update, May 2007
How often do you read a document in Adobe Acrobat?
For many of us, computers are integral to our jobs, and Acrobat documents come across our desks regularly.
But if you’re visually impaired, Acrobat documents (also known as PDF documents) can be a real barrier.
With the right software, it is easy to create a PDF document. Microsoft Word and Excel have an icon that can simply be chosen and, within minutes, produce a document in PDF.
While everything looks good to the person who created the document, a visually impaired coworker may find the document to be entirely unintelligible.
Ensuring that computer programs and documents can be accessed by people with various disabilities is called “accessibility.” And the accessibility of PDF documents is often quite poor.
The department’s commitment to accessibility for the web is long-standing. All DHHS websites should follow the technical and accessibility requirements as outlined in the DHHS Policy and Procedure Manual, Section III, Customer Service Communication Guidelines: “Web Accessibility for People with Disabilities.” The manual is on the web.
But webmasters and others who create PDF documents have not always had the tools or training to make them accessible. If it’s a work document that is needed by a blind or visually impaired coworker, it might not be readable. If it’s a document for one of DHHS’s websites, we’re shirking our responsibility to our blind and visually impaired audience.
Making Acrobat documents accessible is not easy to do. In fact, it’s quite difficult.
The first challenge is the software program. Acrobat Professional is much more powerful in creating accessible PDFs than Acrobat Standard, but not all people who create PDFs have Professional. It is a much more expensive program. Documents that sail through Acrobat Standard’s accessibility test with no issues are shown to have many accessibility issues in Acrobat Professional’s accessibility test. Most divisions have at least one copy of Acrobat Professional, but probably most people who create PDFs are using Standard.
The second challenge is technical, and it’s a thorny issue. The accessibility features of Acrobat Professional have a very steep learning curve. While the Office of State Personnel offers two training classes in Acrobat, neither of them teaches accessibility.
The third challenge is awareness. Many who create Acrobat documents have not heard about accessibility concerns. If they have heard about them, they may have no clue what to do.
An Acrobat workgroup is being formed to create best practices for the department. If you feel you have something to contribute to this workgroup, please contact Lois Nilsen at 919-715-4394.
In the meantime, some resources for learning about creating accessible PDFs are:
Webmasters should be aware of the PDFs that they are asked to place on the web. If you are a webmaster converting file into PDF format and you don't have access to Acrobat Professional, alert your manager to the need for an upgrade to Acrobat Professional. If others give you PDFs for the web, ask them if any effort was made to make the document accessible.
Keep reading the Employee Update for news about best practices.
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