The Fox, PDFs and Screen Readers – OZeWAI

DRANK

IntroductionIn nursery rhymes and fables the fox is usually the villain. In this case, though, the fox is the hero. We are discussing here Firefox’s really nice access to PDF files for screen reader users.But I couldn’t resist a rant about the importance of accessible documents while providing some background to the sometimes vexed relationship between screen readers and PDFs.Some backgroundQuite a lot of screen reader users will tell you that “pdf” and “access” should not be used in the same sentence. That is partly because the structure (or lack of) of many PDFs is a blight on humanity. In this author’s experience though, a well structured PDF makes for a very useful resource in the right circumstances. Those circumstances do not include material to be read online, where HTML is the most appropriate format.This is not a discussion on how or why PDFs should be tagged. If you want a detailed discussion on creating accessible PDFs and remediating those that are not, see Ricky On…