Re: [orca-list] Pdf accessibility in Linux was Re: Trying Quantal Quetsal Alpha 3

[Juanjo Marín <juanjomarin96 yahoo es>]

----- Mensaje original -----
> De: Alex Midence <alex midence gmail com>
> Para: Donald Marang verizon net
> CC: orca-list <orca-list gnome org>
> Enviado: Jueves 2 de agosto de 2012 23:25
> Asunto: [orca-list] Pdf accessibility in Linux was Re: Trying Quantal Quetsal Alpha 3
>
> T hanks for that info, Don.  Bringing this to the list for anyone who
> would care to chime in:
>
> I remember seeing an application called Evince gtk which set it apart
> from Evince.  Has anyone been able to gather whether or not it is any
> more accessible than Evince proper?  Also, can anyone confirm that
> what it does is just put up a picture of the text in the pdf document
> instead of actual textual characters which a screen reader could read?
> I never got around to testing it myself because Ubuntu wanted to yank
> out Evince proper in order to replace it with Evince GTK.  Evince GTK
> was not listed as a Gnome dependency whereas the original version of
> it was and yanking it made my system want to go ahead and yank just
> about all of Gnome with it.  As that was a production system, I did
> not relish the prospect of breaking it just to satisfy my curiosity.



AFAIK, Evince GTK is just Evince without GNOME keyring support. PDF 
accessibilty is a tricky business. There is a developer, Daniel García, who has been 
working in adding basic PDF accessibilty to Evince. 
> As for Acroread, I am seriously considering contacting the
> accessibility person at Adobe using the e-mail Don provides below.
> Adobe has made some efforts in the past to get their documetns
> accessible and they have succeeded very nicely in Windows.  I remember
> how I used to dread pdf's about 10 years ago or so.  These days, it's
> just another document type to me.  It would be nice if we could make
> that happen for us in Linux as well.
>
> Alex M
>
> On 8/2/12, Donald Marang <donald marang verizon net> wrote:
> >  I do not know.  We can ask the accessibility person at Adobe.  I do not
> >  know how much power he has.  He tries to advocate getting accessibility
> >  issues with Adobe products resolved.  Most of the time, it seems new
> >  features and schedules win out!  This position used to be filled by Kirk
> >  Killpatrick, but since the feed never has a name anymore, I have no idea
> >  if he still works at this position.  The email is:
> >
> >  access adobe com
> >
> >  I do not have much faith in the evince application getting access to the
> >  content either!  The last I looked, it is an image viewer designed to
> >  view PostScript images.  It's developers do not seem interested in
> >  adding accessibility, especially when it would require a complete rewrite!



Evince development is just a volunteer effort.  It's not a matter of interest, it just 
a matter of lack time and resources. So I guess Daniel will be able to accomplish 
his goal only if he has enough free time.

Well, I think is unfair to compare the Acrobat to Evince. I wonder why Evince
is accused of lack of interest and a big company with _lots_ of resources isn't.
Anyway, sometimes David can do more than Goliath :-) . I think that basic pdf 
accessibility support is possible in Evince without any complete rewite and this 
is what Dani is working on.

Cheers,

    -- Juanjo Marin