Accessibility Matters

Tony Graham

Senior Architect
Antenna House, Inc.

Abstract

XML, by itself, does not have any support for accessibility. XML is extremely flexible, but it needs to flex in the right directions if it is going to support the information necessary to make a document accessible. This is a guided tour of some of the features of the HTML, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), and PDF/UA (Universal Accessibility) standards. It concentrates on file formats rather than User Agent behaviour, since the information needed to make accessible HTML or PDF usually needs to be included in, or able to be inferred from, the source XML.

However, it’s rarely the raw XML that is presented to users. This paper also strays into some aspects of styling the content to make it more accessible.


Table of Contents

What is accessibility?
Standards for accessibility
Accessibility in, accessibility out
HTML
Tagged PDF
Specialised PDF tags
AH Formatter
FOP
XEP
PDF/UA
Matterhorn Protocol
PAC 3 PDF/UA checker
Common Structures
Language indication
HTTML
Part, Article, Section, or Division
Headings
Table of Contents
HTML
Tagged PDF
Index
Footnote
HTML
Tagged PDF
Endnote
HTML
Tagged PDF
Tables
HTML
Tagged PDF and PDF/UA
Icons, etc.
Tagged PDF and PDF/UA
Mathematics
HTML
Tagged PDF
Citation
HTML
Tagged PDF
Block quotation
HTML
Tagged PDF
Inline quotation
Inline code
Bibliography
Conclusion
Bibliography