About CSREES Accessibility
CSREES is committed to making its Web
site accessible to all USDA customers and
employees. The agency's Web sites are undergoing
review and redesign as necessary to ensure
that they meet or exceed the requirements
of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act
of 1973.
Many of our Web sites currently meet the
Section 508 accessibility standards. Furthermore,
CSREES continues to work on making all
Web sites accessible. Thank you very much
for your patience through this redesign
process. If you have any comments or suggestions
for improvement, please e-mail us at webcomments@csrees.usda.gov.
CSREES Web pages are generally accessible
for persons using screen-reading devices.
A description of the elements of accessible
Web pages is found in The National Federation
of the Blind's Guidelines
for Web Page Accessibility and the
Trace Research Center of the University
of Wisconsin's Unified
Web Site Accessibility Guidelines.
Yahoo has a listing of companies that provide adaptive
computer technology, including screen-reading
software.
Many of the documents on the CSREES Web
site are in HTML or ASCII (plain text)
formats. These formats are generally accessible
to persons using screen-reading software.
We also have a large number of documents
in Adobe Acrobat PDF (Portable Document
Format) format, but this format is not
compatible with most screen-reading software.
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 its 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, 07/16/2007 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.
If you have questions or concerns about
accessibility on our Web site, please e-mail us. |
