To address the needs of visually impaired and other users who must use assistive technology (AT) in order to read, the U.S. Congress passed Section 508 as an amendment to the Rehabilitation Act. (See www.section508.gov for more information)
Section 508 requires U.S. Federal government agencies and contractors to procure accessible software and to produce accessible electronic documents. Since the regulations went into effect in June, 2001, many improvements have been made, but many agencies or contractors have yet to fully comply.
PDF files comprise a major portion of the content on government web sites and vendor submissions, yet few agencies have the resources and expertise to verify or address the compliance status of their documents. |
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Basic Facts about PDF Accessibility:
The best route to 508 compliance is to author documents in an accessible fashion. Correction after the fact presents challenges as a function of complexity in content and layout.
Acrobat's “Add Tags to Document" feature does not make a PDF comply with Section 508, since it cannot ensure correct text flow or add alternate text to graphics.
The Accessibility Checker in Adobe Acrobat cannot verify compliance with Section 508, since among other weaknesses, it is incapable of verifying correct text flow.
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