WebCT Accessibility Learning Module

A learn­ing mod­ule titled WebCT, Acces­si­bil­ity, Usabil­ity and the Dis­abled Stu­dent from Ever­green Val­ley Col­lege. Com­pre­hen­sive overview of bar­ri­ers, solu­tions and alter­na­tives avail­able to ensure your con­tent is acces­si­ble. Great resource. (via Teach­ing and Devel­op­ing Online)

PDF vs. HTML (take two)

There were a cou­ple of good com­ments on my post regard­ing the dif­fer­ences in acces­si­bil­ity PDF and HTML and I wanted to fol­low up with some more thoughts on the issue. In the ear­lier post I ref­er­enced Nielsen’s anti-PDF arti­cle and a rebut­tal to that arti­cle from McDaniels. While I may be ill-qualified and it may be some­what ridicu­lous to rebut a rebut­tal, I’d like to take issue with some of the points made in McDaniels rebuttal.

Here are some of the points made by Mr. McDaniels that I con­sider to be mis­lead­ing along with my own thoughts:

If a web author has sup­port­ing mate­ri­als like .DOC and .PPT files, it is easy to covert these to PDF rather than attempt to re-author the con­tent for HTML.

Is it not just as easy to con­vert a Word or Pow­er­Point file to HTML as to PDF? Why would you need to re-author the con­tent for HTML but not for PDF?

The con­tent and flow of a PDF is the respon­si­bil­ity of the author not the PDF file for­mat. I can employ the same web writ­ing guide­lines you rec­om­mend into a PDF file.

This is true, but the nature and func­tion­al­ity of Acro­bat lends itself much more to design­ing doc­u­ments to look like printed text, not a browser. While you can mimic the style of web con­tent using PDF doc­u­ments, the major­ity of users don’t– it takes too much time and is an unfa­mil­iar use of the PDF for­mat. Why try to mimic a for­mat when you can use the real thing?

PDF’s can be dis­played Full-screen in a browser to hide the Adobe reader inter­face, and they can be embed­ded in HTML as well.

First of all, my guess is that a major­ity of users are unaware of how to elim­i­nate the Adobe inter­ace that shows up in the browser– and if it is hid­den many users are con­fused with how to inter­act with the doc­u­ment. How do you nav­i­gate through the doc­u­ment? How do you print? How do you zoom? If you are going to use PDF’s, it makes sense to keep the inter­face there– but doing so adds a entire sec­ond set of user con­trols for the user to worry about. If you want to print a PDF doc from a browser, do you use the browser print but­ton or the Adobe Print but­ton? Fur­ther­more, when you click on a PDF link on some platforms/browsers it doesn’t dis­play in the browser unless you have a spe­cific 3rd party plu­gin. Instead it down­loads it to your com­puter and you have to then go find it to be able to open it.

PDF file size is deter­mined by the author. Images can be opti­mized auto­mat­i­cally to pro­duce fast load­ing files, and doc­u­ments can be opti­mized for fast web view­ing to allow page-at-a-time down­load­ing of long doc­u­ments. I’ve seen plenty of HTML pages that ref­er­ence 1MB images.

Here the com­par­i­son is being made between good PDF design to bad HTML design. True, images can be opti­mized for both for­mats, but my expe­ri­ence is that when the same con­tent is con­verted into both PDF and HTML for­mat, the HTML is gen­er­ally going to be a smaller file size. See
this case study.

I can build click­able but­tons and links into a PDF. I can even mimic a website’s nav­i­ga­tion bar at the top of a PDF to make things eas­ier for the viewer.

Again, yes you can mimic web­site nav­i­ga­tion using PDF– but why not just use the for­mat that you are try­ing to mimic?

Lest I be mis­un­der­stood, I whole­heart­edly that there are unique sit­u­a­tions where PDF is a more appro­pri­ate forma, but I feel that those sit­u­a­tions are rare. I have no way to test or val­i­date this, but my assump­tion is that is some­one is faced with the choice on a web­site of view­ing the same con­tent in either HTML or PDF for­mat, most peo­ple are going to click on the links to view the HTML. Given a choice, most peo­ple pre­fer to view con­tent in an HTML for­mat. Any­one using any type of tech­nol­ogy can access HTML– no plu­g­ins or 3rd party soft­ware required.

All that said, don’t take my word for it– lots of peo­ples have dif­fer­ent opin­ions on the mat­ter with some accom­pa­ny­ing issues:
Which for­mat should you choose?
How Do You Like Your Doc­u­men­ta­tion
Search Engines and PDF

ILRU Webcast: Making the GRADE: Improving Access to E-Learning

This is late notice, but it looks to be an infor­ma­tive web­cast tomor­row on Improv­ing Access to E-Learning from a cou­ple of fel­lows who appear to know what they’re talk­ing about. The pre­sen­ta­tion is hap­pen­ing tomor­row, June 9 at 3pm East­ern time and you can sub­mit ques­tions before­hand. It looks like they will be talk­ing about their excel­lent cur­ricu­lum that that have made avail­able for free at www.accesselearning.net.