Adobe praised U.S. government agency efforts to make their Web sites more accessible to individuals with disabilities in compliance with federal regulations that took effect today. Adobe has worked closely with federal departments and industry organizations to help them meet these regulation requirements, and has added numerous accessibility features to its award-winning Adobe Acrobat 5.0 software and the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), both of which are widely used by government customers for sharing documents and forms online.
Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act requires that federal agencies purchase or use electronic and information technology that can be made accessible to government employees with disabilities. The regulations also apply to information citizens encounter on government Web sites-many of which offer electronic forms and information in Adobe PDF.
"Section 508 is a major milestone in the effort to offer universal access to government information", said Joe Eschbach, vice president, ePaper Solutions, Adobe. "Adobe commends the efforts of the countless government departments and agencies working to comply with this crucial mandate. We're pleased to offer further enhancements to Acrobat 5.0 to assist in these efforts, and we'll continue to pursue technological advances that improve accessibility for people with disabilities."
Acrobat 5.0 represents a major step forward in Adobe's commitment to make both Acrobat software and the information contained in Adobe PDF files accessible to individuals with disabilities. Today, the company announced the availability of a number of additional tools designed to help customers who create and manage documents, such as government Webmasters, improve the accessibility of online information and services.
The company also released the Paper Capture plug-in for Acrobat 5.0 for Windows, a free download that allows users to apply Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to the scanned image of a paper-based document. The resulting Adobe PDF file contains computer-generated text, which is necessary in order to make the file's information accessible via assistive technologies.
Finally, customers of Acrobat Capture 3.0, a solution for high-volume conversion of paper documents, can now purchase the Tag Adobe PDF Agent, which creates tagged Adobe PDF files as part of the paper capture process.