ACTAPUG – ACT Adobe Products User Group

Adobe is an industry leader for accessibility and takes the needs of all users into consideration during product development. Adobe products promote the creation of accessible content by encouraging designers and developers to produce rich, engaging experiences that are accessible to all. Through standards support and work to ensure that user needs can be met, Adobe delivers products that include visual, mobility, and cognitive accessibility support and continually improves this support to ensure the best experience for all users.

Adobe participates on the Telecommunications and Electronic and Information Technology Advisory Committee (TEITAC), http://webaim.org/teitac/ providing recommendations for updates of accessibility standards issued under Section 508 http://www.section508.gov/ of the United States Rehabilitation Act. Additionally, our participation extends to several standards committees that address accessibility, including the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) working groups and AIIM’s PDF/Universal Accessibility (PDF/UA) work group. http://www.aiim.org/article.aspx?ID=27861

The PDF file format is an ISO Standard (ISO 32000-1) http://www.iso.org/iso/pressrelease.htm?refid=Ref1141 . PDF includes support for people with disabilities that is comparable to other formats, such as HTML. Authors addressing accessibility can use Adobe products to create PDF files with accessibility enhancements for documents, forms, and interactive content that accommodates visual, mobility, and cognitive disabilities.

Flash creates accessible web, desktop and eLearning content that includes rich media. A core set of accessible UI components is provided in Adobe Flash to enable accessible application development. These components automate many of the most common accessibility practices related to labeling, keyboard access, and testing to ensure a consistent user experience across rich applications.

Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader supports accessibility in a variety of ways. Features include compatibility with assistive technologies such as screen readers or screen magnifiers, built in accessibility features such as easy font resizing, contrast settings, keyboard navigation, built in text to speech with the “Read Out Loud” feature.

The Adobe Flash Player displays Adobe Flash content in web browsers and Adobe Flex applications. Flash Player works with assistive technologies to accommodate users with visual disabilities. It also provides keyboard access for users with mobility impairments and support for users with hearing impairments through the ability to display subtitles and captions.

Adobe believes issues of accessibility around PDF and Flash are a direct result of “Authors” of content, not correctly leveraging and using the many methods and best practice at their disposal, within the Adobe applications to deliver accessible content. It is this lack of use/ignorance that produces “less than accessible” content.

The Accessibility Resource Center http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/ provides numerous materials to aid developers and designers in the efficient creation of accessible content.

There is a wealth of Best Practice documents at: http://www.adobe.com/enterprise/accessibility/training.html that speaks to creating, checking, repairing etc PDF documents and PDF Forms to address and conform to the the issues of Accessibility.

Additionally their are individual Voluntary Product Accessibility Templates (VPATs) that Adobe has prepared specifying the details of the US Law relating to Accessibility (called Section 508) and outlining the accessibility-related features of various Adobe Products. A VPAT is a standardized form that lists all of the regulations of Section 508 and explains how a given product helps people comply with each regulation. The VPAT was developed by the US Information Technology Industry Council to be used across the software industry.
These can been accessed here: http://www.adobe.com/resources/accessibility/tools/vpat/

Additional Resources:

Adobe also fosters an Accessibility Blog  and again, it has a wealth of information: http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility/

Summary Information on Accessibility and PDF creation (via Acrobat):
http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/products/acrobat/

Read Adobe PDF content
Learn how to configure free Adobe Reader software to work with assistive technologies that you use and to obtain greater access to PDF files with this how-to guide 3.8M):
http://www.adobe.com/enterprise/accessibility/reader/pdfs/reader7_accessibility.pdf

Best Practices for Accessible Flash design (700K):
http://www.adobe.com/resources/accessibility/best_practices/best_practices_acc_flash.pdf

Adobe Flash CS3 accessibility:
http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/products/flash/

Accessibility best practices for Flex:
http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/products/flex/best_practices.html