Hello Listers,

I hope the following is appropriate for this list, if not, please direct me
to a list where this discussion would be more appropriate.

My opinion is that documents in the PDF format are not truly accessible,
which is in opposition to the contention of most government entities,
service agencies, and in fact many blind people in the know. If we're
speaking of documents with little formatting complexity, text consisting of
paragraphs and headings, then I would agree that just about any pdf to text
converter will perform the conversion with a great deal of accuracy.
However, if the document contains a degree of complexity, tables, charts,
side bars and the like, I have yet to find a pdf to text converter to
accomplish the conversion reliably. If you disagree with my assessment,
please comment and let me know of your experience, and which converter
you've found to perform the conversion with a high degree of reliability.

As I've said previously, I believe we should be discouraging the use of PDF
and instead promote the use of HTML. I bring this up because I've run into
so many instances when a particularly entity has stated to me that as long
as they can provide the document in a PDF format, they have fulfilled their
obligation to accessibility. Again, I invite any opposing view point, but
please explain how you have arrived at your opinion.

Thank you, 
Tony Swartz


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