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The Portable Document Format: An Analysis of PDF Accessibility

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Advances in Human Factors and Systems Interaction (AHFE 2020)

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 1207))

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Abstract

Today, PDFs are frequently used as part of the preservation of historical documents in libraries, and they are also one of the most used formats on the web when sharing information. Unfortunately, most shared documents are not accessible, especially for users with disabilities. To solve this problem, we propose to relate accessibility techniques for PDF documents in accordance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1. As a case study, we have selected a random sample of 10 documents related to the modern architectural heritage of Quito. The authors applied a combined method to check accessibility in PDFs with the help of the PDF Accessibility Checker version 3.0,

The results revealed that the accessibility barriers that are repeated in most documents are related to the content and the natural language of the analyzed PDFs. The analysis applied in this investigation can contribute to future works to generate more inclusive PDF documents.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.access-for-all.ch/en/pdf-lab/pdf-accessibility-checker-pac.html.

  2. 2.

    https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/83n9xvgfcr/2.

References

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Acknowledgments

The researchers thank Universidad de Las Américas - Ecuador, for funding this study through projects UDLA FGE.PAV.19.11, and ARQ.AMG.1802.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad de Las Américas, Vía a Nayón, Quito, Ecuador

    Patricia Acosta-Vargas, Mario Gonzalez, Maria Rosa Zambrano, Ana Medina & Noah Zweig

  2. Universidad de Alicante, San Vicente del Raspeig, Alicante, Spain

    Patricia Acosta-Vargas & Luis Salvador-Ullauri

  3. Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Maria Rosa Zambrano

Authors
  1. Patricia Acosta-Vargas
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  2. Mario Gonzalez
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  3. Maria Rosa Zambrano
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  4. Ana Medina
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  5. Noah Zweig
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  6. Luis Salvador-Ullauri
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Patricia Acosta-Vargas .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept Engg. Mecanica e Industrial, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Caparica, Portugal

    Isabel L. Nunes

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Acosta-Vargas, P., Gonzalez, M., Zambrano, M.R., Medina, A., Zweig, N., Salvador-Ullauri, L. (2020). The Portable Document Format: An Analysis of PDF Accessibility. In: Nunes, I. (eds) Advances in Human Factors and Systems Interaction. AHFE 2020. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 1207. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51369-6_28

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51369-6_28

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-51368-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-51369-6

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