[Fwd: Acrobat 4.0 And PDF Accessibility]

[suereyya poyraz <poyraz_bEi_uni-duesseldorf.de>]

>Acrobat 4.0 And PDF Accessibility
>
>This announcement summarizes the current state of Acrobat Access with
>respect to the new Acrobat 4.0 release.
>
>First, we would like to thank all access users for their continued
>support
>of our accessibility work, including not hesitating to tell us when we
>fall
>short in our stated goals. We would also like to apologize for the
>release
>of our accessibility solutions trailing the main Acrobat 4.0 release,
>however we did not want to release the Access plug-in before it was
>completely tested.
>
>
>Access plug-in Available Now
>
>The Acrobat Access plug-in for Acrobat 4.0 on Windows is now available
>for
>download.  Please visit the following web site for information on
>Acrobat
>accessibility or to download the plugin:
>http://access.adobe.com
>
>If you have additional questions please email to
>access-b_bEi_adobe.com
>
>
>Next Steps
>
>The server conversion technology on access.adobe.com will hereafter be
>upgraded to support PDF 1.3.
>
>
>Upcoming Goals
>
>Here is a brief road map of where we see Adobe's work on PDF
>accessibility
>going in the next 12-24 months:
>
>Built-in Access
>We hope to build accessibility into the next major release of Acrobat.
>
>Accessible Forms and Digital Signatures
>PDF Forms are not yet accessible using our current suite of access
>tools; enabling Form accessibility will be a primary focus over the
>next
>year. In addition, we will address accessibility of new PDF features
>such as
>digital signatures.
>
>Exploit Logical Structure
>PDF 1.3,the file format used by Acrobat 4.0, includes the ability to
>include
>the logical structure of a document.  This is a feature that was
>initially
>motivated by accessibility. We will upgrade our access tools to take
>advantage of the logical structure in PDF, as structured PDF 1.3
>documents
>become more widespread.
>
>PDF Authoring Guidelines
>PDF documents, even more than HTML WWW pages, get created in many
>different
>ways. In order to provide a better level of access, we will be
>creating a
>set of PDF content creation guidelines for accessibility analogous to
>the
>WAI content creation guidelines for HTML.
>
>Accessibility Validation
>As we develop our access guidelines for PDF, we hope to create
>corresponding
>validation tools that allow content creators and publishers to verify
>that
>the PDF documents they publish are accessible.
>
>----------------------------
>David Baskerville
>Senior Product Manager, Acrobat
>Adobe Systems, Incorporated