About PDF Documents
You can download and get help using the
Adobe Acrobat Reader to view and print PDF
documents. If you are having trouble printing the PDF document
check Adobe's website for troubleshooting advice, or e-mail us for a free copy of
the report.
Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format
(PDF) Files
Persons using screen-reading devices generally cannot directly
read documents in PDF format. Adobe Systems, Inc., provides a free
translation service through their Access web
pages, which will translate PDF files to web pages (HTML
documents). This can be used in one of three ways:
- The user's browser can be configured to use this service as a
helper application, so that every time they click on a link to a
PDF document, this document is automatically sent to the Access
server and returned as a web page.
- The user can go to the Access.adobe.com server and fill out a form.
When this form is submitted, the server will retrieve the PDF
document, translate it, and return it to the user.
- The user can send an e-mail message to the Access server,
giving the address of the document to be translated. The server
will then get this document and translate it to either a web page
or a text (ASCII) document. Note that this is the only one of the
three options that also gives the ability to produce a text
document from the PDF file.
If PDF files are not on the Internet and the user doesn't want
to submit the files as an e-mail attachment for translation, Adobe Access is a free downloadable
accessibility plug-in for use with the latest versions of the Adobe
Acrobat Reader for Microsoft Windows 3.1, Windows 95, or Windows
NT. This plug-in converts PDF files on a user's local system into
plain text, which can be read by screen reading programs. For
systems with Internet access, Adobe recommends using the forms-based Access translation service
instead.
For other PDF tools, see the PDFzone web site.