Re: Blind user complaining on Adobe web site

[Greg Knittl]

Hi Ali,

I'm sighted and have plenty of trouble interacting with the world 
through my computer. I can't imagine how I would manage to even get as 
far as going through all the steps to convert pdfs to text if I were 
blind. My hat is off to you.

As a sighted user trying to do my income taxes on Linux in Canada, I 
cannot rely on the etext forms for the blind to be up to date. Similar 
to you, I convert the PDF tax forms to text. This year I have written a 
"text spreadsheet" calculator using awk, tsort and bc/calc that allows 
me to mark up the calculations on the forms and then compute the 
dependencies, generate calculations and generate the results as an 
output text file.

I note the following limitations of converting PDF to text:
1/ I'm unable to convert XFA PDFs to text (fortunately only Ontario 
provincial forms, not federal income tax forms so far)
2/ The fine points of the PDF layout seem to get mangled. For example 
the Canadian tax forms use indentation to show nested calculations and I 
find that harder to see on the text version of the PDF. In general the 
etext versions of the tax forms are more sequential, which is easier for 
me as a sighted user to program against.
3/ Any calculations built into the PDF are lost. I think my "text 
spreadsheet" demonstrates that it is perfectly possible to mark up 
calculation steps on text forms sufficiently precisely to allow programs 
to calculate them. I would think it should be possible to generate a 
common specification for embedding calculations into text files, 
allowing programs to be written for this. I would be interested to know 
whether it might also be of interest to blind users.

Seems to me that the blind shouldn't have to put up with any of these 3 
limitations and various laws may, in theory, give them the clout to 
enforce equality. This would also benefit me as a sighted user on Linux. 
This is a more specific example of potential synergy between Linux and 
users with disabilities.

thanks,
Greg

On 2021-05-04 2:43 p.m., alimiracle wrote:
> hi
> I'm a blind person
> When I want to read the pdf file
> I converting it to a text file
> have fun and be free
> ali miracle
>
> على 4/27/2021 ‫11:34 AM، كتب Greg Knittl:
> > fyi. pdf accessibility issues may be bigger than just XFA...
> >
> > https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat/anyone-know-how-a-blind-person-is-supposed-to-create-or-edit-a-pdf-when-acrobat-isn-t-screen-reader/m-p/10186392?search-action-id=167355598977&search-result-uid=10186392 
> >
> >
> > I see enormous convergence of interest between Linux and the disabled 
> > as we are both 2 small and often overlooked minorities. The disabled 
> > may have more formal legal rights than regular Linux users that we can 
> > piggyback on...
> >
> > Greg
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > libreplanet-discuss mailing list
> > libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org
> > https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
>
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