[LINK] PDFs and accessibility of government information

[Tom Worthington]

Gian Wild will talk about "PDFs and accessibility - AGIMO review" at the
Web Standards Group meeting in Canberra, 16 November 2010:
<http://webstandardsgroup.org/meetings/index.cfm?event_id=182>.

At the previous WSG Meeting, an AGIMO representative expressed the view
(which I support) that it was not feasible to make PDF, RTF or MS Word
files accessible and so agencies should provide information as
accessible HTML pages. That statement appears to have pre-empted the
formal release of the AGIMO PDF Accessibility Review, which was due to
report in mid-2010 (and is now four months late):
<http://webpublishing.agimo.gov.au/PDF_Accessibility_Review.html>.

The current formal AGMIO advice states "Agencies are reminded that it is
still a requirement to publish an alternative to all PDF documents
(preferably in HTML)."
<http://webpublishing.agimo.gov.au/Accessibility.html>.

My suggestion would be to make corporate reports available in EPUB 
e-book format and the same content as ordinary web pages. Corporate 
types would see "e-book" as being a trendy new thing they could read on 
their iPads. Most people would read the same content as ordinary web pages.

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November 2010 Canberra WSG meeting

Date: Tuesday 16 November, 2010 ...

Time: 3.00pm - 4.30pm ...

Topic 1: PDFs and accessibility - AGIMO review

PDFs have always been an issue when it comes to accessibility. With the
advent of WCAG2, it becomes the decision of policy-makers such as AGIMO
and the Australian Human Rights Commission (formerly HREOC) as to
whether PDFs are deemed an 'accessible technology' and whether they can
be on a site without an accessible alternative. AGIMO is currently
undertaking a review of PDFs and their capacity to be made accessible.
This seminar talks about the review and its likely outcomes.

About the presenter

Gian Wild has worked in the accessibility industry since 1998 and
consulted on the development of the first Level AAA accessible web site
in Australia (Disability Information Victoria). She ran the
accessibility consultancy PurpleTop from 2000 to 2005 and built the
accessibility tool, PurpleCop. Amongst other sites, Gian has worked as
the Accessibility Consultant for the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games
and was responsible for training Microsoft developers in accessibility.
She also wrote the original and updated version of the Victorian
eGovernment Resource Centre Web Accessibility Toolkit. Gian was a Member
of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group from May
2000 to August 2006.
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-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/