Adobe Accessibility Blog

Thursday, March 1 is Adobe Day at the CSUN Conference. We’ve got five sessions lined up, all in Elizabeth C (2nd floor):

• Acrobat X, with Greg Pisocky and Pete De Vasto, 9:20am
• Accessible e-books with Adobe Digital Editions with Kiran Kaja, 10:40am
• HTML Accessibility with Adobe Software with Michael Jordan and Matt May, 12pm
• Video and CVAA Compliance with Adobe Tools with Andrew Kirkpatrick, 3:10pm
• Adobe Town Hall with the whole Adobe Accessibility team, 4:20pm

There’s more to come. (Probably involving hors d’oeuvres.) But for now, mark your calendars, and we’ll see you in San Diego.

The Assistive Technology Industry Association’s annual conference, ATIA 2012, will be in full swing tomorrow, and our own Greg Pisocky will be appearing in three sessions:

• “Implementing ISO 14289 (PDF/UA)”, Thursday, January 26 8:00 am to 9:00 am Caribbean 6
• “eBook Accessibility with Adobe Digital Editions and EPUB”, Thursday, January 26 4:00 pm to 5:00 pm Curacao 3 – 4
• “Creating Accessible Documents More Efficiently with Adobe InDesign CS5.5”, Friday January 27 9:20 am to 10:20 am, Caribbean 3 and 4

That’s just the first outing of the year. In February, Adobe will be presenting at Techshare India, the 6th European eAccessibility Forum, and the CSUN Conference. We’ll keep you updated with sessions and times.

Adobe InDesign CS5.5 added a number of new features to make the accessible production of complex documents easier. Now the InDesign team has added an Action for use with Adobe Acrobat X. Once you install it, the Action will walk you through the most common steps for polishing up InDesign documents, including setting a document language, running Acrobat’s accessibility checker, and outputting an optimized, tagged PDF. The InDesign site has all the info, and the InDesign Action for Acrobat X can be found here.

Support for Digital Editions with assistive technologies continues to improve and this update is a tip for users of the Window-Eyes screen reader.

GW Micro has published an app designed to provide support for Digital Editions 1.8.1 that’s comparable to the support provided by other screen readers including JAWS, VoiceOver and NVDA. From the Window-Eyes Control Panel, Press ALT-A to get to the App Menu, and select AppGet. When the list of available apps is displayed, You’ll find Digital Editions in the “Program Enhancements” group.

Digital Editions 1.8.1 can be found at:

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/digitaleditions1-8/

Comments are welcome as always.

Authors looking for additional guidance on how to meet the W3C WCAG 2.0 for PDF documents can now look to the W3C techniques repository for additional guidance. Techniques for PDF authored over the past two years since the release of the last update to the WCAG techniques (which included techniques for Flash) are now part of the larger collection of techniques. View the full set of WCAG 2.0 techniques or view PDF techniques on their own.

These techniques provide a clear path for demonstrating that a PDF document can meet the most current accessibility standard from the W3C.

As with the Flash techniques for WCAG 2.0 and techniques for all other technologies, the PDF techniques are presented as examples which the WCAG Working Group viewed as sufficient to meet WCAG 2.0 success criteria, not as the only way to meet any given success criteria. Authors may discover a new way to address a success criteria, in a way not yet covered in the existing techniques, and be able to demonstrate why it is sufficient. The techniques offer a collection of strategies that have been reviewed by the working group, but the techniques collections for all technologies are works in progress as there are always additional ways to address success criteria.

The table below provides a listing of the WCAG level A and AA success criteria and the PDF-specific and General techniques that authors can employ to meet success criteria. It is worth noting that not all success criteria for WCAG 2.0 have technology-specific techniques. For example 1.3.3 (Sensory characteristics) has only general techniques, and in this case and similar ones I reference the relevant general techniques section. In some cases there are relevant general techniques as well as PDF-specific techniques and for these both are linked.

Update: I neglected to acknowledge the hard work of Mary Utt from The Paciello Group on the PDF techniques initially, but Mary was a tremendous help in moving this work forward and I offer many thanks. Many people on the WCAG working group also worked very hard to help make these techniques reach this final stage. Thanks to all!

Please send general comments, comments or questions on the techniques, or suggestions for new techniques.

WCAG 2.0 Success Criteria and Applicable Techniques for PDF Success Criteria Level Techniques 1.1.1 Non-text Content A

• PDF1
• PDF4

1.2.1 Audio-only and Video-only (Prerecorded) A

• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-media-equiv-av-only-alt

1.2.2 Captions (Prerecorded) A

• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-media-equiv-captions

1.2.3 Audio Description or Media Alternative (Prerecorded) A

•  General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-media-equiv-audio-desc

1.2.4 Captions (Live) AA

• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-media-equiv-real-time-captions

1.2.5 Audio Description (Prerecorded) AA

•  General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-media-equiv-audio-desc-only

1.3.1 Info and Relationships A

• PDF6
• PDF9
• PDF10
• PDF11
• PDF12
• PDF17
• PDF20
• PDF21

1.3.2 Meaningful Sequence A

• PDF3

1.3.3 Sensory Characteristics A

• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-content-structure-separation-understanding

1.4.1 Use of Color A

• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-visual-audio-contrast-without-color

1.4.2 Audio Control A

• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-visual-audio-contrast-dis-audio

1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum) AA

• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-visual-audio-contrast-contrast

1.4.4 Resize text AA

• G142

1.4.5 Images of text AA

• PDF7
• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-visual-audio-contrast-text-presentation

2.1.1 Keyboard A

• PDF3
• PDF11
• PDF23

2.1.2 No Keyboard Trap A

• G21

2.2.1 Timing Adjustable A

• PDF3
• G133

2.2.2 Pause, Stop, Hide A

• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-time-limits-pause

2.3.1 Three Flashes or Below Threshold A

• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-seizure-does-not-violate

2.4.1 Bypass Blocks A

• PDF9
• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-navigation-mechanisms-skip

2.4.2 Page Titled A

• PDF18

2.4.3 Focus Order A

• PDF3

2.4.4 Link Purpose (In Context) A

• PDF11
• PDF13

2.4.5 Multiple ways AA

• PDF2
• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-navigation-mechanisms-mult-loc

2.4.6 Headings and Labels AA

• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-navigation-mechanisms-descriptive

2.4.7 Focus Visible AA

• G149
• G165
• G195

3.1.1 Language of page A

• PDF16
• PDF19

3.1.2 Language of parts AA

• PDF19

3.2.1 On Focus A

• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-consistent-behavior-receive-focus

3.2.2 On Input A

• PDF15

3.2.3 Consistent Navigation AA

• PDF14
• PDF17
• G61

3.2.4 Consistent Identification AA

• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-consistent-behavior-consistent-functionality

3.3.1 Error Identification A

• PDF5
• PDF22

3.3.2 Labels or Instructions A

• PDF5
• PDF10

3.3.3 Error Suggestion AA

• PDF5
• PDF22

3.3.4 Error Prevention (Legal, Financial, Data) AA

• General Techniques: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-minimize-error-reversible

4.1.1 Parsing A

• Not Applicable: PDF is not implemented using markup languages

4.1.2 Name, Role, Value A

• PDF10
• PDF12

In March we released a closed captioning pod for Adobe Connect 8, and now we have a new version with additional features. Version 1.5 of the Connect Captioning Pod is available for free download.

This version still has all of the features available in the earlier version, but the new version also introduces the following features:

• Additional preset for caption providers using Streamtext. Streamtext provides an online caption delivery service utilized by hundreds of real-time captioners in North America and Europe.
• Support for word-by-word caption delivery and caption correction. End users can receive captions as they are entered by the stenocaptioner rather than waiting for a full line of captions to be delivered. Stenocaptioners also have the ability to correct mistakes in the captions by backspacing to delete errors and retype the correction. This feature is an option for the caption provider – at present Streamtext and CaptionFirst support this feature.
• Support for in-meeting captioners. Sometimes a meeting is scheduled when a stenocaptioner is not available, or budget doesn’t allow the hiring of a professional. For these situations, it is now possible to assign a participant the role of captioner. The captioner’s work will be viewed in the caption pod and can be exported to text or HTML and is archived as part of recorded sessions just like captions delivered by stenocaptioners. In-meeting captioners are less expensive but also typically deliver less high-quality captions for end-users. If experimenting with in-meeting captioners, make sure to ask end-users who need captions how effective the results are.
• Updated documentation for caption provider implementation is provided in the download package. Any caption service can deliver captions to Adobe Connect’s caption pod with this information.

Some images of the new pod:

As with the last version of this pod, development work was done by eSyncTraining, and we hope that you are as pleased with the results as we are!

The new pod, and documentation for incorporating it into your Connect meeting, is available now: Connect Captioning Pod v1.5 at the Adobe Connect Exchange.

A new version of Adobe Digital Editions is available, and with it comes additional improvements for accessibility.

Users relying on VoiceOver, JAWS, or NVDA, and keyboard-only or high-contrast users can make use of this application to read electronic books, including books from booksellers such as Barnes and Noble and Waterstones, and books loaned via public libraries which use OverDrive for electronic book delivery.

In this release we’ve addressed several issues identified internally and externally, including the major enhancement request which was to enable continuous reading. We’ve also shared information with assistive technology vendors who have done significant work on their end to increase support for this application.

The installer is available at http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/digitaleditions1-8/. Of particular interest is the “Getting Started” book that is installed with the application, as this book details keyboard shortcuts and other information related to accessibility support.

I’m interested in any feedback that people may have on this release, as well as requests for future enhancements.

UPDATE 1/5/2012: Window-Eyes 7.x now supports Digital Editions 1.8.1 through a downloadable app. More information is available at the blog post announcing the availability of this app.