Accessibility to PDF Files

Survey in 2003

[Japanese]

* Abstract

These days the combinational use of computers and the Internet is a powerful tool to augment independent social communication of persons with severe visual impairments.

With this background, we conducted a survey of accessibility to the Internet by visually-impaired PC users. The survey was done through four mailing lists, and 99 effective responses were obtained. The survey result revealed the purposes of using the Internet and problems faced by them when using the Internet.

One of these problems is thought to be accessibility to PDF files. Thus, in the latter part of this paper describes accessibility to PDF files by screen readers.

* Papers

• Koji Yoshimoto, Tetsuya Watanabe: A Survey on Accessibility to PDF Files by Screen Readers, Meeting of Human Interface Society, Vol.5, No.5, pp.15-22, Tokyo, December 2003 (in Japanese).
• Tetsuya Watanabe, Chuji Sashida, Hideji Nagaoka, Shinichi Okada: A Survey of Internet Users with Visual Impairments - A User Survey and Accessibility to PDF Files -, Journal of Human Interface Society, Vol.6, No.1, pp.139-146, March 2004 (in Japanese).

Last updated: January 23, 2006
Copyright (C) 2003-2006 Tetsuya WATANABE