Because they're intended to be filled out and still look a certain way. Don't believe anybody does that very easily, including JFW and Win-Eyes, let alone users of other technologies. Recognize that the U.S,. Government does not have the luxury of telling the public to use any particular technology. It must be user agent agnostic. Note, also, this is PDF forms, not PDF pamphlets. Am I wrong? As you said, perhaps this is the wrong list to get into that. On Sun, 4 Aug 2002, Charles McCathieNevile wrote: > On the one hand this is pretty strictly an American issue. On the other hand, > it is interesting to know why you don't think that at least properly written > PDF for acrobat 5 is not accessible (obviously there is a lot of PDF that > isn't written to be accessible - and there isn't much to discuss about that). > > It might be that the WAI Interest Group list - w3c-wai-ig@w3.org - is a more > approapriate place to discuss this question (or it might not). > > Cheers > > Charles McCN > > On Sun, 4 Aug 2002, Janina Sajka wrote: > > >This is a clear cut 508 violation, in my view. There is no good > >accessibility to forms in PDF on any platform, including Microsoft > >Windows. > > > > > >On Sun, 4 Aug 2002, Cheryl Homiak wrote: > > > >> does anybody know whether or not there is a way to read the pdf forms on the > >> social security site? I tried pdftotext and they did not come out legible. > >> I also tried using google; the text version link got me a 'not found" and > >> the html link (I put in the url for a particular form) got me the same > >> illegible form that I got when trying to use pdftotext. > >> For an example, one of the forms i tried to access was > >> http://www.ssa.gov/online/ssa-632.pdf > >> Also, > >> is there any way to print these files to a printer short of finding somebody > >> with > >> a Windows system to do it? > >> SSA provides just about nothing as far as their forms in accessible format, and > >> if they are going to > >> say their website provides that, their pdf files certainly don't appear to be > >> accessible to me. Ironically, the instructions for the forms are right on the > >> website, but the explanation is such that you have to be able to look at the > >> form to understand the instructions. > >> > >> Cheryl > >> > >> > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> > >> Blinux-list@redhat.com > >> https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list > >> > > > > > > -- Janina Sajka, Director Technology Research and Development Governmental Relations Group American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) Email: janina@afb.net Phone: (202) 408-8175 Chair, Accessibility SIG Open Electronic Book Forum (OEBF) http://www.openebook.org