[LINK] Government gives thumbs down to PDF format

[Kim Holburn]

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/240304,government-gives-thumbs-down-to-pdf-format.aspx

> Adobe's document format lacks accessibility, says AGIMO.
> 
> The central IT office of Australia's Federal Government has requested that agencies consider the use of alternative file formats to  Adobe's PDF.
> 
> The advice follows a study which found that while accessibility of the Portable Document Format (PDF) has improved over time and remains a popular format for many organisations, it was less accessible to visually-impaired users.
> 
> Published by the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO), "The Australian Government's study into the Accessibility of the Portable Document Format for people with a disability," concluded that if PDF was used, accessible alternative file formats should be made available.
> 
> While the use of PDF files was prolific and preferred over other formats, the study also found that:
> 
> 	• 80 percent of respondents do not complement the use of PDF files without alternate formats;
> 	• PDF files are used by a wide variety of organisations but those are blind or have low vision experience many problems with multi-column designs;
> 	• Screen readers are unable to interact with a document saved as an image-only PDF file because images are not accessible to people who are blind.
> 	• Employing workaround methods to access inaccessible PDF files results in a degraded experience when compared to accessing equivalent documents in other formats.


http://www.finance.gov.au/publications/pdf-accessibility-study/index.html





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Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
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