I, for one am enjoying this discussion :)

My 2c:

1) Let the user know it's a PDF *and* what size the PDF is, eg by putting 
something like (12Kb PDF) beside the link. I'm on dial up at home and it grates 
my backside when sites don't let me know how big the file is....

2) If you can, use Acrobat Pro to autotag your PDF's. It's far from perfect but 
it's a start

3) Never ever assume a tagged PDF is 'screen reader friendly'. A partially 
sighted woman gave a (fantastic) presentation at a conference I attended 
recently where she 'showed' a screen reader opening a PDF and also showed how 
Acrobat rendered the doc in ZoomText. It was absolutely illegible and the 
screen reader couldn't make head or tail of it.

4) Push back on your departments to change the workflow so you get raw content 
and (in a perfect world) time to mark it up.

5) Get a search tool that indexes the raw text of PDF content and lets you 
point users to the text version if they want it. Again, not perfect but better 
than nothing.

Like most government employees, I've got a lot of work to do in this area, but 
it really does need to be done :)

Paul


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