[pdf-devel] Re: Logical document structure, tagged PDF and accessibility

[Jason White]

Leonard Rosenthol  <address@hidden> wrote:
>Accessibility was one of the two reason that the original structured PDF
>advanced to tagged PDF - in that the tags are communicated directly to a
>screen readers (such as Jaws or WindowEyez on Windows).   The
>forthcoming PDF/UA standard is making great advances in this area for
>both ISO 32000-2 as well as their own.

Thank you for the reference to PDF/UA, of which I wasn't aware.

It is very likely that accessibility was also one of the motivations for the
original introduction of support for logical document structures into PDF 1.4.
In fact, if my memory is correct, Adobe announced an intention to add such a
feature as part of their accessibility strategy prior to its inclusion in
products and in the PDF specification. To their credit, they also employed
several highly talented and accomplished experts to work on accessibility and
associated areas of development.

It is pleasing to note that the results of this work, in so far as they
affected the PDF specification, were incorporated into the ISO 32000
standard in sections 14.7-14.9.