Accessibility and PDF

Open Access announces development of new PDF accessibility service

EnablePDF (www.enablepdf.com)

Dublin, Ireland and Nashua, New Hampshire, USA, 09 July, 2004 : Open Access, an international company set up to provide institutions with services to make their internet presence accessible to people with disabilities, announced the development of a new service, EnablePDF, specifically for Adobe Acrobat (PDF) documents.

The announcement was made today at the 9th International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs in Paris.

A recent survey of Irish Government web sites found that 90% of the sites were inaccessible. “Initial results reveal that overuse of inaccessible PDF documents is creating significant difficulties for people with disabilities.” While most institutions use the PDF format to publish important documents, these documents are not, by nature, accessible. Adobe has done a lot of work in recent years to address this issue and the provision of tagging functionality means that correctly formatted and tagged documents will adhere to accessibility guidelines. The issue for institutions is one of creating the documents with the correct tags, this requires software programs and staff with the relevant training. Even with these resources it is a time consuming and costly task.

To address this problem, Open Access is developing a web based service whereby companies will be able to upload their pdf documents and have them returned to them with the relevant accessible features added. The service will include the production of a full report as to the changes made to the document. The service will be called “EnablePDF” and will be available at the website www.enablepdf.com.

Open Access is a company set up by leading exponents of accessible web technologies from the US and EU. Those involved include:

The Paciello Group (www.paciellogroup.com): Mike Paciello is a leading US based proponent of accessibility solutions and was involved in the creation of the Web Accessibility Initiative (www.w3c.org\wai\). Mike and his team consult for major US corporations and government bodies on accessibility issues.

Usable Design (www.usabledesign.ie) :Usable design is an EU based company with in depth expertise in accessible web technologies and has completed websites for the National Disability Authority of Ireland and The European Year of Disabilities.

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