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I may be missing something obvious, but why is pdf such a bad choice? As long as it has actual text and is reasonably typeset (selecting text in this pdf seems

by labawi 6y ago

I may be missing something obvious, but why is pdf such a bad choice? As long as it has actual text and is reasonably typeset (selecting text in this pdf seems to work properly), I don't see what's wrong. I'd take it any day over webpages with random floating content that you have to click through and use a modern browser with javascript without blockers/filters for the content to even render, in small text on 20% of the page, with low contrast and somehow broken zoom.

lucasmullens 6y ago
I would assume PDFs don't typically work well with screen readers, which is what a large part of web accessibility is designed for.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  As PDF is essentially saying, “put this thing here”, you’d think it wouldn’t. But it does. You can embed the source text for screen readers. It’s also how copying text from PDFs works.
- viraptor 6y ago
  As long as they're produced in a reasonable way, they work just fine. The option was even included natively in adobe reader 9 https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/hiat/tech_quick_guides/adobe_read_out_loud.pdf https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/hiat/tech_qu... Where it breaks down is some badly designed OCR systems which place the letters independently rather than in lines/blocks. But that's starting from a document which was not accessible in the first place, so not a huge issue.
pvorb 6y ago
The whole topic of this thread is reading web pages on a PSP. There's a whole universe of devices that perfectly render good old server-side HTML with CSS styling, but can't display a PDF for reasons. Or if they can, it will be annoying because it won't fit on the screen and be readable at the same time. That's its unique selling point as well as its biggest drawback. I have to admit that many modern SPAs also won't rendet on many devices, though.

by labawi 6y ago

lucasmullens 6y ago

I would assume PDFs don't typically work well with screen readers, which is what a large part of web accessibility is designed for.

colejohnson66 6y ago
As PDF is essentially saying, “put this thing here”, you’d think it wouldn’t. But it does. You can embed the source text for screen readers. It’s also how copying text from PDFs works.
viraptor 6y ago
As long as they're produced in a reasonable way, they work just fine. The option was even included natively in adobe reader 9 https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/hiat/tech_quick_guides/adobe_read_out_loud.pdf https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/hiat/tech_qu... Where it breaks down is some badly designed OCR systems which place the letters independently rather than in lines/blocks. But that's starting from a document which was not accessible in the first place, so not a huge issue.

pvorb 6y ago

The whole topic of this thread is reading web pages on a PSP. There's a whole universe of devices that perfectly render good old server-side HTML with CSS styling, but can't display a PDF for reasons. Or if they can, it will be annoying because it won't fit on the screen and be readable at the same time. That's its unique selling point as well as its biggest drawback. I have to admit that many modern SPAs also won't rendet on many devices, though.