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Re: Blind user complaining on Adobe web site
From: |
Paul Sutton |
Subject: |
Re: Blind user complaining on Adobe web site |
Date: |
Thu, 6 May 2021 08:10:46 +0100 |
On 06/05/2021 07:11, Greg Knittl wrote:
Hi Ali,
I'm sighted and have plenty of trouble interacting with the world
through my computer. I can't imagine how I would manage to even get as
far as going through all the steps to convert pdfs to text if I were
blind. My hat is off to you.
As a sighted user trying to do my income taxes on Linux in Canada, I
cannot rely on the etext forms for the blind to be up to date. Similar
to you, I convert the PDF tax forms to text. This year I have written a
"text spreadsheet" calculator using awk, tsort and bc/calc that allows
me to mark up the calculations on the forms and then compute the
dependencies, generate calculations and generate the results as an
output text file.
I note the following limitations of converting PDF to text:
1/ I'm unable to convert XFA PDFs to text (fortunately only Ontario
provincial forms, not federal income tax forms so far)
2/ The fine points of the PDF layout seem to get mangled. For example
the Canadian tax forms use indentation to show nested calculations and I
find that harder to see on the text version of the PDF. In general the
etext versions of the tax forms are more sequential, which is easier for
me as a sighted user to program against.
3/ Any calculations built into the PDF are lost. I think my "text
spreadsheet" demonstrates that it is perfectly possible to mark up
calculation steps on text forms sufficiently precisely to allow programs
to calculate them. I would think it should be possible to generate a
common specification for embedding calculations into text files,
allowing programs to be written for this. I would be interested to know
whether it might also be of interest to blind users.
Seems to me that the blind shouldn't have to put up with any of these 3
limitations and various laws may, in theory, give them the clout to
enforce equality. This would also benefit me as a sighted user on Linux.
This is a more specific example of potential synergy between Linux and
users with disabilities.
thanks,
Greg
I agree with you here, but should it require new laws to make
developers do the right thing and make things accessible, there is a
marketing term UPS (Unique Selling Point) here, if we can make software
accessible to everyone then that counts in our favour, it is the 'right'
thing to do, and yes it is difficult, challenging etc, but surely people
are up for the challenge.
It shows we need more diversity in software development processes, but
also that developers need to be more in tune with their users, even if
this is at the cost of extra features.
I know this is difficult, we need to see things from a view point of a
user, (who may not be an expert with computers) I do still feel that
computing is 'elitist' we need to learn to engage with users. Even with
a degree of expertise we should not need that to do basic everyday or
essential tasks.
I can't comment on the tax forms, but one thing that may help here is to
contact the federal tax office and praise them for getting it right and
ask if they can encourage others (in this case Ontario) to follow suit
in terms of accessibility. Show a good example of what works, as a
model of this.
Lets keep this discussion going, but turn it in to proper action to
ensure everyone can access digital services fully.
Hope this helps
Paul
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