”> The [PDF] format is intended and optimized for print. It’s inherently inaccessible, unpleasant to read, and cumbersome to navigate online.” PDF format is pe

”> The [PDF] format is intended and optimized for print. It’s inherently inaccessible, unpleasant to read, and cumbersome to navigate online.” PDF format is perfectly capable of holding structured text and other machine-readable/accessibility data, alongside the print-ready representation. Ask the developers of document authoring tools (starting with MS Office) and the various PDF generation libraries why they don’t include all that data as standard. One can argue the appropriateness of a print-derived format in a constantly fluid digital world, but it does what it was designed to do and does it pretty well, and it could provide a lot more if developers and users could be bothered to do it. And yes, HTML is its own exercise in awfulness that is equally bad at everything. I’d rather set my feet on fire that propagate that horror further. Honestly, what we really need is a 21st-century Donald Knuth. I only wish she’d hurry up.