ADOBE ACROBAT 7.

0 7
Section 1: Accessibility and Adobe PDF

5. Descriptive text is available for all graphics, links, and form fields

Accessible Adobe PDF documents also have descriptive text, usually called alternate text, to describe special items on
a page, such as illustrations, graphs, charts, form fields, and links. Screen readers and other assistive technology
typically cannot read graphical elements. By adding alternate text, you enable the technology to interpret the element
and read a description of the element to the user. And although screen readers can state that a form field is present
and can read URLs out loud, you can give the user a more meaningful context for navigating them if you also provide
descriptive text about these elements.
You must have Acrobat 7.0 Professional to add alternate text and descriptions to PDF page elements.
6. Navigational aids are available

Accessible Adobe PDF documents also have many navigational aids for the userlinks, bookmarks, useful and
frequent headings, a detailed table of contents, and an optimized, preset tab order for forms and embedded links.
These navigational aids enable users to go directly to a particular place in a document instead of reading through it
page by page.
You can set most navigational aids during conversion to PDF from authoring applications. You can set bookmarks
and links by using Acrobat 7.0 Professional or Acrobat 7.0 Standard.
7. A document language is specified

While some screen readers are designed to read documents in a particular language, specifying the document
language in an accessible Adobe PDF document can benefit those screen readers that can switch to other languages
during operation.
You can set the document language for an entire PDF document by using Acrobat 7.0 Professional or Acrobat 7.0
Standard. You must have Acrobat 7.0 Professional to set the document language for specific portions of a multilanguage PDF document.
8. The document uses fonts that allow characters to be extracted to text

Another characteristic of an accessible Adobe PDF document is that the fonts within it contain enough information
for Adobe Reader or Acrobat to correctly extract all the characters to text for purposes other than displaying text on
the screen. For example, the application extracts characters to text when users listen to text by using a screen reader
or the Read Out Loud tool in Adobe Reader or Acrobat, or when they copy, paste, or save text to a file.
If the fonts underlying information is sufficient, Adobe Reader and Acrobat can extract each character correctly each
time someone does these tasks. If the fonts information is insufficient, the application cannot substitute characters
correctly, and the output is faulty. For instance, a screen reader or the Read Out Loud tool may seem to ignore words
or characters, or users may get question marks, black rectangles, or similar marks when they copy, paste, or save a
PDF file as text.
Occasionally, a font does not contain enough information for Adobe Reader or Acrobat to correctly extract all the
text characters. Although users can read the document on the screen as they would any other PDF document, the
PDF document is considered inaccessible and you cannot repair it. You should stop working on it for accessibility.
To check whether a PDF document has inaccessible fonts, you must use Acrobat 7.0 Professional.
9. The security settings dont interfere with screen readers

The final characteristic of an accessible Adobe PDF document is that its security settings do not interfere with screen
readers. You can typically specify that no part of an accessible PDF document is to be copied, printed, extracted,
commented on, or edited. The setting to restrict copying, however, could interfere with a screen readers ability to
read the document, since the screen readers functionality depends on a sort of copying of the documents text in
order to play it back. For this reason, Acrobat provides an option called Enable Text Access For Screen Reader Devices
For The Visually Impaired.
You can apply this setting by using either Acrobat 7.0 Professional or Acrobat 7.0 Standard.