Posted under Accessibility and MS Office & Accessibility and PDF
Written by: Jeff Singleton
There have been so many times I get questions from people who purchased a 3rd party product that allows them to save documents to a PDF only to find out that they can’t save an accessible (or tagged) PDF. They want to know how they can make their files accessible. Sadly, all I could really tell them is that they would need a copy of Acrobat to create these files. If they wanted to do any edits to the accessibility of the file after the fact they would need the more expensive Acrobat Professional version.
Now costs are a big concern to most, especially in today’s economic environment. So it is hard for many businesses to justify the cost of a product like Acrobat Professional. For the home user this cost is even harder to justify. So the low cost 3rd party applications and plug-ins that allow users to create PDFs have held a lot of appeal. But those low cost applications do nothing to help promote accessibility.
Well a new era of PDF accessibility is on the horizon. I just discovered a plug-in for Microsoft Office 2007 that will allow the saving to a tagged PDF! I tested this plug-in briefly and can say that my quick tests show that the plug-in works with Word, Excel and PowerPoint. It apparently will work with eight different Microsoft Office 2007 applications. Amazing!
I am truly excited about this plug-in because to me it does more than just allow any Microsoft Office 2007 user to create accessible PDF documents. It empowers them to be a part of enabling users everywhere to have equal access to information without having to worry about the added cost of “doing the right thing”.
Now a person will still need to take steps to ensure the proper care is given to the source document so that the final PDF version is accessible. This is especially true since you will still need a copy of Acrobat Professional to make any accessibility edits after the fact. So there is still a need to educate people on how to create accessible documents. That is something blogs and discussion forms like this one help to promote.
The sad part about this is that the download page that gives an overview of the plug-in says nothing about accessibility or its ability in this regard. It still makes me wonder what is required to get the big players in this industry to put the proper focus on accessibility. With that being said, I certainly hope that the accessible part of this plug-in is not an oversight. If it is we may see this plug-in pulled quickly. So don’t hesitate and grab your copy now!
You can find this plug-in at:
This plug-in was released with little to no fanfare that I know if. I just discovered it while searching through the help file in Office. The published date is listed as 11/8/2006. Maybe I am “Johnny Come Lately”? I don’t think so, or I would have heard about this sooner. Why haven’t I heard about this sooner? Am I the first to discover that this plug-in creates tagged PDFs?! No matter. I am still excited about this find!
In my opinion this one plug-in can do wonders for the world of accessible documents. I feel like the Berlin Wall of accessibility barriers (cost) has just started to fall!
Please, shout with me. WOOT!
3 Responses to “The Ability To Create An Accessible PDF Has Been Brought To The Masses!”
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miba51 on 15 Apr 2009 at 11:39 am #
WOOT! Thanks for posting about this. I am very interested in the field of accessibility, but I am still very new. I just discovered this blog, and plan to follow it from now on. Cheers ~ Jim Cox
Jeff Singleton on 17 Apr 2009 at 9:53 am #
Welcome aboard Jim! Let us know if you have any particular questions. We are happy to help.
-Jeff
pp0306 on 07 Jul 2009 at 10:43 pm #
I have been making accessible PDF files for web publishing for the last 2 years. The source PDF files are authored by people unkown to me and the source files are not available. Many a times I encounter problems which can be solved only by an expert in accessible PDF files. One such problem is “when I tag a paragraph as say “text”, the actual text disappears”. At times, this happens with tables as well as images/graphics. Who can help in understanding why this happens?
The second problem is that I am not convinced the way screen reader reads Tables. If what I am saying is wrong, I would like to receive a tagged PDF file with a table in it which will make sense to a visisbly impaired person.
Can someone guide me? Thanks