[Athen] PDFs or Word docs?

[Christine Robinson]

Hi all,
I don't know how many from this group are also in Georgia Tech's WAG (Web Accessibility Group) listserv, so pardon the cross-posting if you get both.

Someone in WAG started a thread about Adobe's PDF accessibility checker and the challenges of making PDFs accessible. It sparked me to ask a couple of questions about PDFs vs. Word documents. I'm cross-posting because I'd love to hear the ATHEN folks' thoughts.

I'm still comparatively new at accessibility of electronic documents, but over the past several months, I've been thinking there are major advantages to using MS Word documents instead of PDFs. And so far, I've only been doing training in accessible Word documents, because I don't believe my institution is quite ready to approach PDFs.

To summarize my thinking:

1.       It's easier to make Word documents accessible than PDFs.

2.       Before you can make an accessible PDF, you really have to understand how to make an accessible Word doc first.

3.       If you save your Word doc in Read-Only format, it still protects the document from inadvertent changes, and it's easier for a reader with a disability to change the typeface, font size, etc., to something that works better in their case.

4.       A couple of traditional advantages to PDFs are that (a) the reader doesn't have to have the same software as the document author before they can read the doc, and (b) it preserves the appearance of the doc, in case the reader doesn't have the same font set. But in an educational setting, I think (?) all our students have access to MS Office, and even if they don't have the same font set as the author, Word will default to using a font that is still accessible. Consequently, I don't believe PDF format is as necessary in edu settings as it used to be, particularly for documents that are primarily text.

Use of PDFs is so deeply ingrained in our practices, however, that often people don't seem to hear the advantages of Word. They just want to push forward for training in PDFs.

So my first question is: Am I off-base for putting priority on MS Word?

Second question: If you've been having issues in getting PDF files accessible, could you please detail some of those issues for me? I'm collecting such examples, to determine whether I should build a stronger case for getting our faculty and staff solid in Word before attempting PDFs.

Thanks!
Chris

Christine Robinson | Technical Trainer/Writer | Center for Teaching Excellence
Georgia Gwinnett College | 1000 University Center Lane, L-2158 | Lawrenceville, GA 30043
678-407-5193

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