Amex Woes Highlight Common PDF Accessibility Problem

American Express has come under criticism, and potential legal action, for the lack of accessibility of its credit card website. A blind customer of American Express credit cards found that Amex's change in the presentation of its online credit card statements from HTML to PDF format effectively prevented him from accessing his financial information online.

Rourke, Chris. User Vision (2007). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Adobe Acrobat

PDF and Accessibility

The rapid growth in the use of PDFs on Websites has lead to increasing concerns about accessibility, particularly for the users of screen reading technology, which converts text into synthetic speech or electronic Braille.

Hudson, Roger. WebUsability (2004). Articles>Accessibility>Software>Adobe Acrobat

PDF Can Comply With Section 508. Now It's Your Move

A blind person cannot read from a screen any more than from a printed page. Technologies nonetheless exist that allow blind and other disabled users impressively full-featured access to documents. To be accessible, however, the document contents must be available to these so-called 'assistive' technologies.

Johnson, Duff. PlanetPDF (2003). Articles>Accessibility>Adobe Acrobat>Section 508

PDFs and Section 508: Compliance, Accessibility, and Usability  

This paper addresses limitations and problematic issues of usability and accessibility involved in the creation and use of Adobe Acrobat PDF files for people with visual impairments who use screen readers as an assistive device. In some cases, due to technological limitations, PDF documents can present information incorrectly to such persons. A document which is accessibility compliant may then not be fully usable by individuals with visual impairments. The lack of specific guidelines for accessible PDF documents complicates the issue, though a series of W3C PDF Checkpoints provides some guidance. Problematic issues discussed include footnotes, special characters and formats, acronyms and abbreviations, and tables.

Dolin, Samantha and Jane L. Willig. STC Proceedings (2004). Articles>Accessibility>Adobe Acrobat>Section 508

Adobe Acrobat and PDF

After HTML, PDF (Portable Document Format) files are probably the most common files on the Web. PDF is usually used when a file needs to appear or print a certain way, regardless of the browser or technology. PDF files can be made accessible to people with disabilities, although usually with more difficulty than with HTML. A key part of this process involves creating tags that make a document more accessible to screen reader users.

NCDAE (2006). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Adobe Acrobat

Read-Aloud PDFs

Are you aware that PDF documents are readable by your computer? You can listen to any PDF instead of reading it!

CyberText Consulting (2009). Articles>Accessibility>Visual>Adobe Acrobat