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Authoring for Accessibility
Authoring for Accessibility
Whether you're publishing a document in HTML, Adobe PDF, or some other
format, creating accessible documents requires much more than simply repre-
senting the original document accurately. Sighted people can look at a printed
page and easily discern the difference between titles, subtitles, columns of text,
headers, footers, and so on. Visual clues, such as location of the text on the page,
bold text, and large font sizes help them determine the structure of a document
so they can read and navigate it easily.
Unfortunately, assistive technologies such as screen readers can't depend on these
visual clues. They must instead rely on the underlying computer-based infor-
mation to provide that same structure. As a result, making documents accessible
depends on two things:
Authoring the original documents so that they contain not just content (such
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as the text in the document) but also information about the structure of the
content (such as how the text flows within the page and from page to page).
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Using publishing tools such as Adobe Acrobat software and Adobe PDF
technology that can retain and encode both the content and the structure
so that it can be interpreted by assistive technology.
In order to do this:
Authors need to be aware of the importance of writing with the intent of
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creating accessible documents, and how to accomplish that.
Authoring and publishing tools can be enhanced to help authors create acces-
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sible documents.
These same requirements apply to any type of publishing environment,
regardless of the file format or application. If you want to make it possible for
people with screen readers to navigate documents correctly, the underlying struc-
tural information must be present.
About Adobe Acrobat Software
Adobe Acrobat 5.0 software provides a number of capabilities that improve
access for disabled users. In particular, it:
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