Accessibility US GAO section 508 -- PDF/A-1a

[OregonJohn]

Our office is now required to send PDF/A-1a for both US Federal and State of Oregon filings. While not fully implemented yet, it will become fully required in the coming years.

My understanding is that PDF/A-1a is basically a PDF with reduced file size that includes tags that allow the PDF text to flow properly on different devices and when read by software.

Our OCR software will produce tagged PDFs but a full implementation of Section 508 would require a review of the PDF document and then ... adding tags where they were not automatically added (perhaps some images or sections did not get tagged).

The General Services Administration Center for IT Accommodation posted a document dated November 1, 2004 explaining the process required for preparation of documents "into an accessible PDF format that is readable by people with disabilities" and that to do so "requires a few extra steps beyond the 'save as' conversion method."

The document is available at http://www.section508.gov/docs/pdfguida ... rnment.pdf .

That document states on page 5 that "When content is not included in the Tags tree, you may wish to add it to the tree or to mark it as an artifact, since screen readers skip over artifacts."

While the government may not be terribly fussy about having everything tagged properly now, it may take that fussy step in the future.

I would appreciate it if you would consider making plans to implementing viewing and adding tags. I realize it is a significant addition to your software package but in the near future it may be necessary for many companies doing business with US federal and state agencies. As it stands now we would switch to one of your competitors software package to facilitate such additional tagging (we just have a few copies of that software in the office).

Thank you for a great affordable PDF product.

John.

[John - Tracker Supp]

Hi John,

I am pleased to confirm that we are already committed to providing PDF/A compliance in both terms of PDF creation, manipulation and viewing to our products in the near future.

We already provide PDF/A 1b generation in our drivers and this will be updated to include 1a in an upcoming release before the end of the year - the Viewer and other tools will follow suit during the early part of next year progressively.

Hope that helps.