PDF News and Tips
May, 2005

PDF Meets Section 508: Duff Johnson's presentation now available

At the recent Adobe Acrobat and PDF Conference in Orlando, Florida, DSI's CEO Duff Johnson presented PDF Meets Section 508, a presentation for content authors and managers on the impact of Section 508 on PDF content.

The presentation addresses the Section 508 law, and how it applies to PDF files. It highlights the fact that PDF has so far been a "blind spot" (literally and figuratively) in web-content accessibility assessments. The fact is that while MUCH of federal and contractor content is presented and disseminated in PDF, almost none of these documents complies with Section 508 - or even comes close.

The presentation covers many practical aspects of creating accessible PDF files... and highlights some of the problem areas as well.

Making sure your PDF files comply with Section 508 and are accessible and usable besides is in the interest of every content manager. If you need help, please contact Document Solutions for a free PDF Accessibility consultation.

Didn't see Duff in Orlando? Download the presentation! (PDF, 458kb, Section 508 compliant!)

Document Solutions brings dozens of Health Plans into Section 508 compliance

Millions of Federal employees get their health insurance through the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program. Many thousands of these employees are disabled, and disabled employees may need to frequently refer to their plan's benefits, exclusions, co-pays, and so on.

For this reason, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) set a deadline of April 29th, 2005 for all participating Plans to submit their PDF brochures in Section 508 compliant form. Unusually, OPM also decided to require each Plan to have their Brochure certified as Section 508 compliant by a 3rd party vendor.

In 2001, Document Solutions, already five years a specialist in PDF technology, was the first company in the world to offer Section 508 compliance and certification services especially for PDF files.

As a result, the company was the natural choice as certification provider for several dozen FEHB Plans, with thousands of pages processed in the 2nd half of April alone! Document Solutions was the first company to pre-qualify our work with the OPM staff responsible for managing the quality of the Plan submissions.

It was noted during our compliance assurance and certification process that although all Plans had started with an OPM-provided MS Word template - one supposedly designed with accessibility in mind - there was an enormous variance in the quality of the PDFs produced from each Plan's version of the template. Some PDF files required very little work to make compliant. Some required a great deal of additional manual labor and checking.

Document Solutions has advised OPM of our findings with respect to the template Plan brochure, and we expect to see a dramatically improved version for the 2006 Plan year... a template that will hopefully make it easier for Plans to have their brochures comply with Section 508 in the future.

Section 508 compliant brochures should be posted soon! Check OPM's website for updates. Visit OPM's FEHB Website.

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A Quick What, Why and When of Bookmarks

There is no practical limit to the number of pages a PDF files may contain. However, there IS a limit to the frustration users care to face when confronted with a 300 page PDF manual and nothing but an (unlinked) Table of Contents on pages 31-35 to go by.... well, you get the point. Or... you SHOULD get the point! If you are still wondering what this is about... read on!

Bookmarks are the way to do Tables of Contents in a PDF file. Bookmarks are also an excellent way to refer users to key sections, images, data, or even other files or websites. The key value of Bookmarks is that they are ALWAYS PRESENT. Wherever you go in your document, the Bookmarks are there, ready to take you to any other location instantly.

Without Bookmarks, your fancy 400 page PDF file, doubtless full of vital information, is about as useable as the doorstop it so closely resembles. Consider that at least half of the users who open your file will stumble around for 2, 4, even 10 minutes, trying to navigate your document to find what they are after. If this document is to be used by lots of people, that's a problem. With Bookmarks, all users, not just the "power users", can be in and out in seconds. You should think of what all that time costs, and how cheap it is to recover.

Bookmarks are crucial for documents over 20 pages or so. Bookmarks are even MORE vital for documents intended for use online. Why?

When a "Fast Web View" optimized PDF file begins to download into the browser, it first loads Page 1 of the PDF file. Page 1 is where Bookmarks are "stored" in the PDF. Thus, if Bookmarks are present, even before Page 2 begins to download, the user may be already examining the Table of Contents. By selecting any Bookmark, the user forces that page to become the next page downloaded.

In this fashion, even very large files, hundreds of pages and tens of megabytes, may be easily navigated by online users without necessarily downloading the whole file.