[Athen] article advocating for PDFs in College & Research Libraries News

[John Gardner]

Steve, please understand that advocating for PDF is presently equivalent to advocating that no STEM articles are accessible. I am no expert in this area, but I do believe that with minimal care, html can be created so that everything is accessible. Perhaps not as beautiful as PDF, but I am unaware of anything that cannot be presented in html. So why not advocate for html and point out areas where it needs improvement?
John

From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu> On Behalf Of Steve Green
Sent: Saturday, September 10, 2022 3:24 AM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Athen] article advocating for PDFs in College & Research Libraries News

I have no experience of dealing with maths in any document format. I know people who do implement it in PDF, but I don’t know how they do it.

There are many types of content and many aspects of accessibility, so a full assessment of all them in all the different document formats would be a substantial piece of work. And some people never encounter some content types, so some shortcomings of a particular document format may not matter to them.

For instance, in 17 years of doing document remediation, I have never encountered maths, physics or chemical formulae, but I know someone who deals with exam papers who does hundreds of such PDFs every year. We do a lot of annual financial reports in which every page has a unique, complex layout and dozens of charts, graphs, flowcharts, org charts etc., but some people in the education sector may never have to work on documents like this.

Forms are one type of content that PDF can handle very well (if you know what you are doing), but Word handles extremely badly regardless of what you do.

For people who need to use alternative colour themes, Adobe Reader’s colour substitution options for the text and background colours are far better than those in Word.

For people with low vision, PDF allows reflow options that don’t exist in Word. This means that the zoom level can be increased without limit without a horizontal scrollbar appearing, so you only need to scroll in one direction. Adobe Reader has a basic reflow capability, while the VIP PDF Reader supports reflow even better. The nearest feature that Word has is the Web Layout, but horizontal scrolling is necessary even at low levels of magnification.

Steve


From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu> On Behalf Of John Gardner
Sent: 09 September 2022 23:50
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Athen] article advocating for PDFs in College & Research Libraries News

Steve, Math can be accessible in Word. How do you make math accessible in PDF?

From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu>> On Behalf Of Steve Green
Sent: Friday, September 9, 2022 3:36 PM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list at u.washington.edu>>
Subject: Re: [Athen] article advocating for PDFs in College & Research Libraries News

I don’t agree with Susan’s assessment, other than the article is too short to consider all the aspects of what is a large topic. However, I didn’t see anything that I would consider to be incorrect.

I also think that Susan has set up a false dichotomy between the ease of creating a small, simple accessible Word document and remediating a PDF that was exported from an inaccessible source file. When exporting from Word, the resulting PDF will be at least as accessible as the Word file and in some ways it will be more accessible. It won’t be less accessible.

Bear in mind that you never create a document as a PDF. It always starts as some other document format, such as Word, PowerPoint, InDesign etc. If you know how to make the source document accessible and you are happy with that level of accessibility, the resulting PDF will not need any remediation in Acrobat.

If you want to, you can do further remediation in Acrobat such that the PDF achieves a higher level of accessibility than is possible in the source document format. Even if you have done everything possible in Word, you may be able to make the document even more accessible as a PDF, depending on what the content is.

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd


From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu>> On Behalf Of Susan Kelmer
Sent: 09 September 2022 20:36
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list at u.washington.edu>>
Subject: Re: [Athen] article advocating for PDFs in College & Research Libraries News

Well, there is some glaring misinformation in there, and definitely too short a piece to be truly useful.

Remediating a PDF is difficult and time-consuming, while creating a good quality accessible WORD document is easy and only takes a few steps. That good quality Word file, which only took a few minutes to create properly, can then be output to multiple formats, including tagged PDF and HTML.

I am not sure the author really understands what he is talking about.


Susan Kelmer
Alternate Format Production Program Manager
Disability Services
Health and Wellness Services
T 303 735 4836
www.colorado.edu/disabilityservices<http://www.colorado.edu/disabilityservices>


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From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu>> On Behalf Of Adina Mulliken
Sent: Friday, September 9, 2022 12:35 PM
To: athen-list at u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: [Athen] article advocating for PDFs in College & Research Libraries News

Sorry, this article might not be the best thing to share on a Friday afternoon, but here it is.   I’m not agreeing with the article.

Chee, M., & Weaver, K. (2022). The great PDF debate: Accessible or impossible?. College & Research Libraries News, 83(8), 363. doi:https://doi.org/10.5860/crln.83.8.363

At least the article cites a couple of articles that advocate a different view.

Adina

Adina Mulliken
Associate Professor, Librarian Silberman Social Work and Urban Public Health Library
Hunter College, City University of New York
2180 3rd Ave. New York, NY
Phone 212-396-7665
Pronouns she/her
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