Internal USGS Access Only

PDF Accessibility Suggestions

My TOP TEN LIST on how Acrobat 5 can be used by USGS Web Masters (or other Acrobatsmithers) on behalf of the disabled:

1. If source document (USGS report, fact sheet, etc.) was properly manufactured in MS Word 2000 or Adobe FrameMaker 5 or 6, its format (first order-, second order-, third order-headings, captions, contents, table headings, etc.) are already identified and tagged and will carry over into the menu/contents of the Acrobat distilled PDF. This is great for navigating through the report or fact sheet. Other navigational aids, such as hot buttons, can also be added in post-production.
2. Acrobat allows for a huge variety of user-chooseable zoom factors helpful to the visually impaired. If scalable Adobe PostScript fonts (not TrueType) were used in the original document, the type will render sharp at any and all zooms. An Acrobatsmither can also preformat the PDF to automatically jump to any preselected section at a preselected zoom factor (e.g. user clicks on an item in table of contents which will not only bring him/her to that page but also zoom into the paragraph where that section starts).
3. Vector art (not raster art) will redraw (rerender) at any zoom factor to the maximum sharpness of the user's monitor. This is absolutely great for the user who wants to look into the fine details of maps and charts! Don't GIF or JPEG a map if you've got a perfectly fine EPS that will embed into a PDF document! The file will likely be smaller too.
4. An Acrobatsmither can override or replace colors to reformat PDF colorspace for colorblind users. PDFs can be saved in CYMK colorspace or RGB colorspace. PDF colors can be optimized for printing presses, office printers, or video display.
5. Acrobatsmither can hot tag items or text (e.g. "a photograph of the polluted well is shown in figure 1") so that the user can jump to the photo if he/she desires. It also works great to tag the items listed in the Index or Glossary to jump back to through the document to where the items appeared.
6. Acrobatsmither can tag items outside the host document, like links to HTML webpages or to "multimedia" animations, audio sounds, and/or video (e.g. your report shows a photograph of floodwaters overrunning a bridge, user could click on the static photo to launch a MPEG or QuickTIme movie clip of the flood).
7. Text flow capability allows text to speech audio converters to audibly read text.
8. Acrobatsmither can convert disparate USGS electronic legacy documents to PDFs. New tags can be added as post-production enhancements to old legacy documents. Where electronic files were never created or the electronic files are unusable or lost, a skilled Acrobatsmither can use Acrobat Capture to scan in legacy USGS hardcopy to recreate them as new PDF documents. Legacy items can thus be posted to the web for viewing or reprinting. The user need not have the original host application (Wordperfect, PageMaker, FrameMaker, Word, Quark, etc.) to open to view the reformatted legacy document since it is now a readable PDF. Web Masters need not waste talent, time, energy, and taxpayers money transmogrifying backlogs of reports into HTML; its much simpler and faster to PDFify.
9. Free Acrobat Reader software works in Windows, Macintosh, and UNIX. It is available in dozens of foreign languages and is used worldwide. It is cross-platform and cross-cultural.
10. 10) A properly manufactured PDF (with fonts embedded) will display type properly, and the on-line document can be downloaded by user for printing at home or at work with typography and layout uncorrupted by font substitutions. A properly manufactured PDF report will look nearly identical to the original (as published on paper) USGS publication.

Submitted by Mark V. Bonito, Illustrator (Physical Scientist, USGS)

"Mastering a Web Site" online course Created and maintained by Lorna Schmid and David Boldt. http://water.usgs.gov/usgs/training/webmaster/pdf_accessible.html     Last modified: Fri Aug 15 11:16:07 EDT 2003