What is the state of PDF accessibility ?

[Alex ARNAUD <alexarnaud hypra fr>]

Hello all,


Last month with the Debian project, Hypra has animated a table in a Bug 
Squashing Party where 7 users experts of NVDA, VoiceOver and ZoomText 
have been invited to challenge GNU/Linux accessibility.


One of the main accessibility issue reported was the PDF
accessibility on GNU/Linux.
Unfortunately at this time we seem so far away from Windows, Adobe 
Reader and NVDA because tagged PDF are not supported on Evince.


After searching a little bit more on the subject on the internet I've 
noticed that a crowdfunding campaign has been made by the GNOME 
Foundation to increase PDF accessibility. More information here : 
https://www.gnome.org/news/2013/02/call-for-bids-for-gnome-accessibility-work/

A bounty is also opened on the subject : https://www.bountysource.com
/issues/1331044-meta-make-pdf-in-evince-accessible-with-orca

Igalia as published three blog posts about their work on PDF accessibility :
- https://blogs.igalia.com/apuentes/2013/09/04/15/
- https://blogs.igalia.com/carlosgc/2014/07/30/evince-hackfest/
- 
https://blogs.igalia.com/apinheiro/2014/04/28/gnome-3-12-1-out-pdf-accessibility-progress/

As state on the blog post the work should have been continued but it 
seems that the work have been stopped in 2013 or 2014.


- What is the state of the PDF accessibility project?
- Who has launched the campaign?
- How could we continue the huge work made?
- Is there a roadmap to improve things, if they were financed?


Best regards.
--
Alex ARNAUD
Visual-Impairment Project Manager
Hypra - "Humanizing technology"