The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) has released draft versions of WCAG 2.0 techniques to support PDF and Silverlight and has issued a call for review. AGIMO are particularly interested in the draft PDF techniques for WCAG 2.0.
The draft techniques generally seem good, and complement the recent PDF accessibility education sessions. However, there is still a potential issue with assistive technologies. The findings of the 2010 Study into the Accessibility of the Portable Document Format for people with a disability considered the 10 most commonly used assistive technologies in Australia1. Comparing these assistive technologies with those listed in the draft techniques, it appears that mainly just users with the latest versions will fully benefit at this stage.
We are also aware of some concerns about the inability of PDF to completely separate content from presentation at a level that allows some people with low vision to restyle the documents sufficiently to meet their reading needs. As such, agencies need to understand this issue for low vision, as it will play a role in the determining whether the use of PDF is appropriate. A graphic example showing the finance.gov.au web page follows to demonstrate the linearization, colour and font changes required by some people with low vision.
Screen capture: finance.gov.au as it was designed
Screen capture: finance.gov.au modified as required by some low vision users
The release of these PDF techniques will create an expectation that government will be producing PDFs in line with the new techniques, and users may look to take advantage of the developments in this area, subject to assistive technology support.
In the Study into the Accessibility of the Portable Document Format for people with a disability, we stated that once Sufficient Techniques for PDF were released, we would review the position on the use of PDF. As such, it is important that the Community of Expertise reviews the draft PDF techniques – keeping in mind the common assistive technologies in use in Australia – and discusses their applicability to government PDF publishing, and the related issues of meeting the needs of people with disabilities, by commenting to this blog post. AGIMO will be participating in this discussion, and seeking wider input, with a view to responding to WAI’s request for feedback on the draft techniques. We will finalise input on behalf of the Australian Government by mid-August.
For those with an interest in Silverlight, draft Silverlight techniques for WCAG 2.0 have also been released and require review and comment.
As the draft techniques are a subset of broader WCAG 2.0 documents, W3C has published new complete drafts of Techniques for WCAG 2.0 and Understanding WCAG 2.0 as well as difference-marked versions of both documents:
- http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2011/WD-WCAG20-TECHS-20110621/complete-diff.html
- http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2011/WD-UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20-20110621/complete-diff.html
We invite your feedback on these issues and look forward to a productive discussion.
1. Note: The 10 most common assistive technologies in use was based on information provided by assistive technology vendors at time of publishing the Study in November 2010.