Stap isi

6 February 2009

My name is b3rn and I make PDFs

So – you work in local government, on the web. Chances are you’re responsible for thousands of bloody PDFs. I know I am.

Still, it kind of grates when experts – usually from outside government – wag their finger at you. PDFs are not accessible, you should mark up the information using HTML, etc. Yeah, right!

… so I was very glad to see that WIPA has just published the presentations from the Web Accessibility 2.0 Seminars held late last year.

Roger Hudson’s Moving to WCAG 2.0 and Simon Reid’s Flash Accessibility are both excellent, but the money shot comes from Andrew Downie of the Centre for Learning Innovation at the NSW Department of Education and Training.

He offers a more nuanced view of information delivery via PDF and gives valuable, practical advice for us Acrobat monkeys.

If your MS Word docs are appropriately formatted (headings for headings, lists for lists, paragraphs for paragraphs) and you avoid text boxes, tables for layout and table rows split across pages, you can create accessible documents.

Use Word as a word processor, not a desktop publisher.

Check the powerpoint and audio for more detail. The penultimate slide links to additional resources.

— b3rn   accessibility, pdf   Feb 6, 01:44 PM   #   Comment [1]