Introduction

Introduction

Foreword

ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies (ISO member bodies). The work of preparing International Standards is normally carried out through ISO technical committees. Each member body interested in a subject for which a technical committee has been established has the right to be represented on that committee. International organizations, governmental and non-governmental, in liaison with ISO, also take part in the work. ISO collaborates closely with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) on all matters of electrotechnical standardization.

International Standards are drafted in accordance with the rules given in the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2.

The main task of technical committees is to prepare International Standards. Draft International Standards adopted by the technical committees are circulated to the member bodies for voting. Publication as an International Standard requires approval by at least 75% of the member bodies casting a vote.

Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subject of patent rights. ISO shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights.

ISO XXXXX-1 was prepared by Technical Committee ISO/TC XXX, Document management applications, Subcommittee SC X, Application issues, PDF/UA, consisting of representatives of ISO/TC XXX/SC X.

ISO XXXXX consists of the following parts, under the general title Document management — Electronic document file format enhancement for accessibility:

Introduction

PDF is a digital format for representing documents. PDF files may be created natively in PDF form, converted from other electronic formats, or digitized from paper. Businesses, governments, libraries, archives, and other institutions and individuals around the world use PDF to represent considerable bodies of important information. These PDF files need to be made accessible to users with disabilities.

Document accessibility depends upon machine-recoverable text presented in a declared language; the inclusion of structure, such as the tagging and logical organization of pages, sections, and paragraphs; and a variety of descriptive metadata, such as alternate text for images.

The primary purpose of this International Standard is to define an implementation of ISO 32000-2, known as PDF/UA, that provides a mechanism for representing electronic documents in a manner that allows the file to be accessible.

These goals are accomplished by identifying the set of PDF components that may be used, and restrictions on the form of their use, within conforming PDF/UA files.

By itself, PDF/UA does not necessarily ensure that the visual appearance of the content accurately reflects any original source material used to create the conforming file. For example, the process used to create a conforming file might substitute fonts, reflow text, downsample images, or use lossy compression. Organizations that need to ensure that a conforming file is an accurate representation of original source material may need to impose additional requirements on the processes that generate the conforming file beyond those imposed by this International Standard. In addition, it is important for those organizations to implement policies and practices regarding the inspection of conforming files for correct placement of accessibility information.

AIIM (an accredited standards developing organization) maintains an ongoing series of application notes for guiding developers and users of this ISO standard. These application notes are available at http://www.aiim.org/pdfua/app-notes. AIIM will also retain copies of the specific non-ISO normative references of this International Standard that are publicly available electronic documents.

Scope

This International Standard specifies how to use the Portable Document Format (PDF) ISO 32000-2 to produce electronic documents which are accessible.

This International Standard does not apply to:

• Specific processes for converting paper or electronic documents to the PDF/UA format
• Specific technical design, user interface, implementation, or operational details of rendering
• Specific physical methods of storing these documents such as media and storage conditions
• Required computer hardware and/or operating systems

Normative References

The following referenced documents are indispensable for the application of this document. For dated references, only the edition cited applies. For undated references, the latest edition of the referenced document (including any amendments) applies.

Note 1: AIIM (an accredited standards developing organization) maintains copies of the non-ISO references that are publicly available electronic documents.

Date and Time Formats, W3C Note, 15 September 1997. Available from Internet <http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime>

Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Third Edition), W3C Recommendation, 4 February 2004. Available from Internet <http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-xml-20040204>

ISO 32000-1 (details to be filled in upon publication)

Tags for the Identification of Languages, RFC 1766, March 1995. Available from Internet <http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1766.txt>

Terms and Definitions

For the purposes of this document, the following terms and definitions apply.

actual text

transcription of the contents of a picture of text

adaptive technology

device employed by a person with a disability to carry out tasks that would otherwise be difficult or impossible because of the person’s disability

alternate text

text equivalent that replaces an image

conformance level

identified set of restrictions and requirements to which files and readers must comply [ISO 15930-4]

dictionary

associative table containing key–value pairs, specifying the name and value of an attribute for objects, which is generally used to collect and tie together the attributes of a complex object [ISO 15930-4]

electronic document

electronic representation of a page-oriented aggregation of text and graphic data, and metadata useful to identify, understand, and render that data, that can be reproduced on paper or optical microform without significant loss of its information content

font

identified collection of graphics that may be glyphs or other graphic elements [ISO 15930-4]

glyph

recognizable abstract graphic symbol that is independent of any specific design [ISO/IEC 9541-1]

interactive reader

reader that requires or allows human interaction during the software’s processing phase
NOTE A file viewing tool is an example of an interactive reader; a raster image processor is an example of a reader that is not interactive.

PDF

Portable Document Format

file format defined in PDF Reference and its Errata [ISO 15930-4]

reader

software application that is able to read and process files appropriately [ISO 15930-4]

writer

software application that is able to write files [ISO 15930-4]

XMP packet

structured wrapper for serialized XMP metadata that can be embedded in a wide variety of file formats

1. Define the relationship between PDF/UA and the PDF Reference 1.7
2. Statement of Conformance
3. Nomenclature for Modules 

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