Re: PDF accessibility (was Re: N:Vision CFL's)

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Dave Houston" <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:461145c3.1553906375@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> "Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> >Technical documents probably lend themselves the most to "pan and scan"
type
> >reading.  But PDF's are hardly device independent, and that was one of
the
> >features of the web that made it so effective to begin with.  The HTML
> >browser lays out the page depending on your display and text size
> >preferences.  PDFs are a real bitch for the visually impaired compared to
a
> >web page that allows for dynamic text re-sizing.  Based on the finely
> >detailed work in your XTB's, your vision is far better than mine.
>
> While the article has nothing to say about how it will handle PDFs, this
may
> be of interest.
>
>
http://www.techtree.com/India/News/IBM_Develops_A-browser_for_Blind/551-8019
3-643.html

Thanks for the citation.  Interesting to note that is was developed by a
blind man for blind people.  The article also notes that IBM estimates that
over 160 million blind and partially-sighted people around the world would
benefit from this a development.

There was a "golden age" of personal computing for the blind back when the
world was DOS and text based.  Everything followed in logical order and
screen readers didn't have to do very much more than parse a simple ASCII
text stream.  The jump to a GUI was a critical step in making PC's available
to the masses, but ever since then, the sight-impaired have been getting a
rough-than-usual ride trying to make sense of the ever-increasing clutter of
most web page designs.

Adobe, MS and others have been hard at work on this issue.  After all, it
will only be a few years before all the baby boomers who have grown up with
PCs grow old with them.  Perhaps if my own sight wasn't degrading so quickly
I'd be less prickly about sight-impairment issues.  My apologies to the
group.

--
Bobby G.