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Announcing access.adobe.com
Welcome To Access At Adobe!
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Please visit http://access.adobe.com
This page is your launching point for learning more about
universal access to Adobe products. The primary focus at present
is enhancing the accessibility of PDF.
Portable Document Format (PDF) is a platform-independent means
of exchanging visually rich documents. PDF is fast becoming a
pervasive means of communicating richly formatted information
on electronic networks including the Internet and its most
popular segment, the World Wide Web (WWW). PDF documents are
rich in visual layout, and are popular among users capable of
appreciating the high-fidelity visual presentation. However,
visually impaired users have found PDF documents hard to
access. Conventional screen reading technologies ---software
that enables a visually impaired user listen to the contents of
a computer display--- prove ineffective when reading the rich
visual presentation.
In the past year, Adobe has been working on a
platform-independent solution aimed at enhancing the
accessibility of PDF to visually impaired users on diverse
computing platforms. This new strategy relies on standard WWW
protocols and clients to bring PDF accessibility to the
standard HTML browser that users already use for surfing the
WWW. We have implemented a PDF2HTML translator that converts
textual content from PDF documents to HTML. You can now use
this conversion technology to more readily access PDF documents
using your favorite WWW browser and screen access application.
1) You can set up your WWW browser to use a special translation
proxy server at Adobe, and have any PDF file you encounter on the
WWW automatically converted to HTML.
2) You can submit a URL to any PDF file you wish to read using an
interactive WWW form. The document will be converted to HTML and
presented in your WWW browser.
3) You can mail a URL to a PDF document in the body of an email
message to pdf2txt@xxxxxxxxxxx (for plain text) or to
pdf2html@xxxxxxxxxxx and have the convertor mail back the result of
translating the PDF file.
For a detailed description of these accessibility services, read
http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/access.html
Note: All of these services are based on tools I developed for my
own use at Adobe; I have been using these tools on a daily basis
for over nine months now and find them indispensable for my work.
I hope they are equally helpful to readers on this list.
--Raman http://cs.cornell.edu/home/raman
--
Best Regards,
--raman
Adobe Systems Tel: 1 (408) 536 3945 (W14-129)
Advanced Technology Group Fax: 1 (408) 537 4042
(W14 129) 345 Park Avenue Email: raman@xxxxxxxxxxx
San Jose , CA 95110 -2704 Email: raman@xxxxxxxxxxx
http://labrador.corp.adobe.com/~raman/raman.html (Adobe Internal)
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Info/People/raman/raman.html (Cornell)
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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are my own and in no way should be taken
as representative of my employer, Adobe Systems Inc.
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