I had previously heard that Office 2007 (or 12 back then) was going to have built in PDF support, with tagging (i.e. accessible output). Not too long ago I installed Vista and Office 2007 on my work machine, but there was no sign of it. Then I found the Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS Add-in for 2007 Microsoft Office.

A simple rule for good web sites: content is golden. In an accessibility context, structured content is golden. It a core responsibility of the site owner to ensure this is followed (not just the developer). When you examine this issue, you can then understand why few organisations will ever produce accessible PDFs.

If your interest was peaked by mention of addressing accessibility issues at the Information Architecture (IA) stage when reading my .Net article, there is finally some further reading on it.

In case you missed it on accessify, Mike Davies posted detailed notes from his presentation on AJAX and accessibility. It’s all good, but one part I particularly applauded…

With all the fuss over AJAX and Flash accessibility you get, I thought it might be worth outlining the process we used to create a Flash/AJAX widget and highlight one of the advantages you get with this method. It also means that the use of Flash has no impact on your Search Engine Optimisation.

I’m just back from @media, and thought I’d post up brief notes (such as they are) for my own reference and anyone else’s gain. Obviously, I will only comment on the presentations I saw, and it’s all from my own particular perspective.

Jesse James Garrett - Beyond AJAX

I didn’t …

A little while ago Joe Clark asked me to review the WCAG Samurai’s WCAG 1 errata, which Joe has announced will be published today.

Also available is my independent review of the errata: WCAG Samurai Errata Review. Unbeknownst to me, Joe had also asked Gian Sampson-Wild, who’s review …

Steve Falkner did a good presentation to the WSG last week, outlining how and why AJAX can work with screen readers. One tiny little point I wanted to pick up on was whether it was a waste of time to update AJAX content if you’ve attached an event to an element that isn’t a link or form control.

Following up on the responsibilities in accessibility, some of the most critical gaps at the moment are on the User Agent (UA) end. This post highlights the things I think would make the most difference to people’s experience of accessibility on the web.

In my previous article on responsibilities in accessibility you might have noticed that I’d fallen into the traditional accessibility trap of only really referring to (X)HTML/CSS sites and guidelines. I’m quite aware of other technologies, but it’s worth looking at why other formats are harder to make accessible.