Joe,

I think to say that Adobe "dropped the ball" is somewhat harsh.  Sure
there are problems with PDF but it is mostly a legacy problem that
stems from the fact that the original concept was entirely graphics
based and targeted at the desktop publishing market.  The progress
they have made in light of this fact is nothing less than incredible.
To completely correct the problem we as blind users have with PDF, it
would take nothing less than a complete redesign from the conceptual
level through to the actual applications.  In a perfect world, that is
what we could hope for, but this is the real world.

The truth is that Adobe has put a great deal of effort into making PDF
accessible, and in cooperation with GW Micro and later, HJ, they have
made it much more usable than it ever has been.  Can you honestly tell
me that you are no better off in terms of working with PDF files than
you were 4 or 5 years ago?

This is not to say they still don't have much left to do, especially
in the area of authoring tools and legacy conversion tools, but even
if it is not as fast as we want it, or need it, it is happening.
However, the blind community itself is not entirely blameless in this
matter either.  As with the GUI, there was a significant gap between
the appearance of these products and concepts on the market before
anybody in the blind community paid them any attention or took any
definite steps to make their concerns known.  GUIs showed up in
commercial form in the late 70s (late 60s in research labs), but it
wasn't until the early 90s that most of the blind community caught on,
saw what was happening, and did anything about it.

One looming technology is the hyperbolic interface which nobody seems
to be paying much attention to because on the surface it looks like
just another graphical interface, but beyond that, there will be some
far more significant access issues if nobody in the community starts
paying attention, and so far, I don't see that anybody is.

-- Jim