PDF’s: The EVIL Among UsNo really, I hate them.

TWITTER DELIVERSJust got this at 10:40 this morning

History of the PDFDEVELOPED IN A HISTORICALLY SIGNIFICANT TIME. Or was it “HYSTERICALLY”?

Leading Technology

Dirt SimpleJust hit “Save As >”

Dirt SimpleJust hit “Save As >”

Open the twirl down >

Select “pdf” >

Choose Destination >

Hit “Save”.

Open Finder

Navigate to file.

Open ftp client.

Find directory for upload.

Select file.

Confirm.

Upload.

The Definition of an “EASY” Job:Someone else does the job.

Hello, html

Jakob Nielsen"the king of usability" (Internet Magazine)

"the guru of Web page usability" (The New York Times)

"the smartest person on the Web" (ZDNet AnchorDesk)

"the world's leading expert on Web usability" (U.S. News & World Report)

"one of the world's foremost experts in Web usability" (Business Week)

"the reigning guru of Web usability" (FORTUNE)

"eminent Web usability guru" (CNN)

"the usability Pope" (Wirtschaftswoche Magazine, Germany)

Jakob Nielsen’s Top 10 Mistakes In Web Designhttp://www.nngroup.com/articles/top-10-mistakes-web-design/

2. PDF Files for Online ReadingUsers hate coming across a PDF file while browsing, because it breaks their flow. Even simple things like printing or saving documents are difficult because standard browser commands don't work. Layouts are often optimized for a sheet of paper, which rarely matches the size of the user's browser window. Bye-bye smooth scrolling. Hello tiny fonts.

Worst of all, PDF is an undifferentiated blob of content that's hard to navigate.PDF is great for printing and for distributing manuals and other big documents that need to be printed. Reserve it for this purpose and convert any information that needs to be browsed or read on the screen into real web pages.

> Detailed discussion of why PDF is bad for online reading

PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption

"They [PDF files] don't behave like Web pages. It's not the speed. It is like having a solid thing rather than a fluid thing.”

"What we've got is a page of a PDF document which is great when printed out, but on the screen it is hard to read. The print is too small…"

http://www.nngroup.com/articles/pdf-unfit-for-human-consumption/

PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption

uTest: If you could eradicate one thing from the mainstream web to improve users’ experiences (eg: Flash, IE6, pop-ups, et al), what would it be and why?

JN: In 2000, it would definitely have been Flash. Today, it’s PDF.

http://blog.utest.com/testing-the-limits-with-jakob-nielsen-part-i/2011/04/

The Wrong Tool

Pinch Zoomrepeat

repeat

repeat

repeat

repeat

repeat

repeat

Repeat

repeat

repeat

repeat

repeat

DON’TUSE

PDF’S

But if you do,Tag everything.

What the hell?Give people tools they can use.

Communication

It’s kind of like…

It’s kind of like…

The Journey to EnlightenmentThe hard road

Subject: video detailing how to create accessible PDFs from InDesign

Afternoon all:

I just watched this video - it's a bit dated (it shows Adobe CS4), but I assume that the process hasn't changed that much:

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/accessibility-adobe/preparing-indesign-files-for-accessibility/

The video is almost 40 minutes, detailing the MANY-step process of creating PDFs that will pass accessibility standards, but it really shows what we're up against with this issue. (The example document in the video is only a 1 page flyer, and it takes two-thirds of an hour to walk us through the process).

The reason I'm circling back to this issue is that it has come to our attention that the campus police (the folks with guns), are expecting that all 10 security reports be accessible PDFs.

Also, the really disappointing thing I learned from watching this is that, no matter how well-organized our styles and tags are in InDesign, there is always a significant amount of hand work that will need to be done to every PDF to make it fully functional to assistive devices.

I'll keep researching this, and keep you posted, but we'll have to figure something out for the security reports.

-phil

How to Build Accessible PDF Resources

PURDUE UNIVERSITY WEB ACCESSIBILITY COMMITTEE RESOURCE SITEpurdue.edu/webaccessibility/resources/

WEB AIMwebaim.org/

ADOBE ACCESSIBILITY TOOLSadobe.com/accessibility/

MICROSOFT ACCESSIBILITY TOOLSmicrosoft.com/enable/

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT HOW-TOhowto.gov/web-content/accessibility/create-accessible-pdfs