Welcome to the Great Lakes ADA Center's quarterly Accessible Technology Bulletin

Trainings & Events

A New Grant for the Great Lakes ADA Center

The Great Lakes ADA and Accessible IT Center has been serving the region of Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, and Indiana since 1991 as a project of the University of Illinois at Chicago. Recently, we received funding to continue from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) in the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services.

There will be a few changes to the Center in this next grant cycle. First, we have a new name: "DBTAC: Great Lakes ADA Center".

There are 10 regional Disability and Technical Assistance Centers (DBTAC) across the nation. The DBTACs provide a central, comprehensive resource on ADA issues in employment, public services, public accommodations, and communications. Each DBTAC center works closely with local business, disability, governmental, rehabilitation, and other networks to provide ADA information and assistance.

The Center’s new goals include: 1) Increase employment outcomes for people with disabilities, 2) Increase community participation of people with disabilities, and 3) Help ensure full implementation of the ADA.

The Great Lakes ADA Center will also expand our 2001 initiative addressing accessible information technology in schools. The new Center technology activities will include more in-depth training and technical assistance to businesses regarding accessible and assistive technology.

The Center will also be creating a resource toolkit to aid students transitioning from post-secondary school to employment. The toolkit will be piloted with Wisconsin Technical Colleges and made available in the Great Lakes Region.

This new publication, the Accessible Technology Bulletin, will replace the K-12 Bulletin which began in 2005. The new bulletin will reflect the broader audience we are trying to reach. The Accessible Technology Bulletin will be produced quarterly and highlight training and resources on accessible and assistive technology. Archived issues of the K-12 Bulletin are still available on our website.

Please feel to send comments and/or questions on the new bulletin to Janet Peters, Project Coordinator.

Accessible PDF Documents

Many people have used or seen PDF files and they are an increasingly common method to distribute content over the internet.

There are many advantages compared to HTML or proprietary formats (such as Microsoft Word). The key to understanding PDF is really to think of it as electronic paper. It is designed for device independent and resolution independent viewing and printing of page based documents. While physical paper is relatively simple, electronic paper is far more complex. Maintaining independence from the viewing platforms requires adding a lot of extra information into the file.

It is important to understand that PDF is not a word processing file format. It is really more of a free format file which the text of the document; and formatting code such as the fonts, character encoding, images, color spaces, patterns to view and print like a paper version.

Access to these different objects is through a lookup table and therefore a PDF file is not in a natural "read" order. For example, from the start of the PDF file, paragraph 2 does not necessarily follow paragraph 1. Page 2 may come after page 4.

In the past, PDF files have been largely inaccessible, particularly to people using screen readers. Adobe has made great strides in allowing those create PDF files to adding "structure" and other features to increase their usability by people with disabilities.

However, few authors are currently creating tagged PDF files, either because this requires additional effort or because of lack of awareness. Authors are also limited by the capabilities of their word processing or desktop publishing tools, many of which have PDF export capabilities that do not currently support tagged PDF format. Some users may also not realize how to access a PDF file to take advantage of some features making it easier to access.

Adobe provides a guide to creating to accessible PDF documents with Adobe Acrobat version 7. Create Accessible PDF Documents with Adobe Acrobat (PDF, 10.3M). They also have general information on accessibility on their website at www.adobe.com/accessibility.

Technical information on creating "tags" can be found at the magazine Accessible Content in their article Playing Tag: Creating Accessible PDF files.