Adobe Acrobat Reader 7 Accessibility Features
Published: Jun 19, 2007
Greg Pisocky, accessibility outreach manager at Adobe Systems, gave a preview of Adobe’s Acrobat Reader version 7 at the last Techshare conference. E-Access Bulletin gave details about these accessible new features.
Adobe Systems accessibility outreach manager admits the past PDF “was deemed to be inherently inaccessible,” said Greg Pisocky in E-Access Bulletin. Â ”Now we’ve introduced something that at least makes it easier to modify how information is presented. Things are not perfect in Adobe 7.0. Tables continue to be the bane of our lives. But we’ve moved forward.”
The new version of the Adobe’s Acrobat software has some new accessibility focused features like ‘tags’ in the document to determine the logical reading order. With these tags, complex designs will flow into a single block of text. The tag option will even try to create a logical order if the PDF creator does not apply these smart tags in Acrobat. Also buttons are tagged better and Adobe made the search options in the software more accessible.
The new Adobe Acrobat Reader 7 also offers more integration with Jaws and Windows-Eyes screen readers. Adobe considers these products ‘trusted agents,’ meaning that the screen readers can even access files that are security protected.
The new version of Reader also contains an accessibility set-up assistant, which detects if a screen-reader is used and asks how the user would like to view the files. Other features include better tagging of the software’s own graphical buttons and improved help and search functions.
Source: E-Access Bulletin
