• First is an interactive map of US unemployment published on Fobes.com.
• The second, simpler example is a map of The Who's 1997 Quadrophenia Tour in Europe."

Adobe has worked on accessibility standards committees in the U.S. and internationally, including: the W3C's WCAG 2.0, ATAG 2.0, Timed Text/DFXP, HTML5, and Protocols and Formats working groups; the U.S. Access Board's TEITAC subcommittee; and the PDF Universal Accessibility work group at AIIM. Two important goals of our participation are to help ensure that accessibility standards are effective at meeting the needs of those with disabilities and to promote technological neutrality. From an accessibility perspective, we believe that developers should be able to use any technology as long as they are able to deliver content that meets accessibility standards and end-user needs.

Adobe Flash and PDF (which is now an ISO standard - ISO 32000-1) both provide support for accessibility, but it is important for authors and developers to learn best practices and understand user needs in order to deliver results that take advantage of the unique capabilities of the formats and that allow all users to access the information and functionality. Authors sometimes will make a trade-off between producing a visually interesting application in a timely fashion and adhering to accessibility requirements. Other times, accessibility gets left to be dealt with at the end of a project that has a firm end-date and when other features take longer than expected, accessibility or other items fall off the schedule. Government agencies don't get to make these trade-offs as they are bound by law to make their services accessible, but commercial entities don't have the same requirements and often overlook the needs of people with disabilities when creating web experiences and documents.

Despite our best intentions, Adobe overlooked the needs of people with disabilities in our recently-launched Open Government web site, which failed to meet certain accessibility best practices. Some customers have contacted us and a few bloggers pointed out the issues and we are working to improve the Open Government site. We apologize to everyone who attempted to access the site and was unable to do so. With the benefit now of seeing the site in its present state rather than the initially-planned more dynamic and interactive version, the team is recreating the site using a combination of HTML and Flash. Several improvements to the current Flash-based site have been addressed already. My hope for this post and the intention of the Open Government site is to help other developers learn from this example, and improve their own development practices of visually rich web sites for access by all users.

Whether users need to use assistive technologies such as screen readers or magnifiers, operate their computer with the keyboard alone, view larger text sizes, view captions or subtitles for audio information, or utilize many other accessibility features, these features already exist in Adobe products. And while these are not perfect in all products yet, we are dedicated to enabling our tools to handle accessibility in robust and reliable ways.

If you are interested in learning more about accessibility in Adobe products, I'm providing some interesting links below. As always, we value the feedback of our customers and end users, so let us know your thoughts.

For more information about PDF accessibility:

• http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/products/acrobat
• http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/products/reader

For more information about Flash accessibility:

• http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/products/flash

PDF and Flash accessibility training resources:

• http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/tutorials.html
• http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/best_practices.html

Adobe accessibility compliance statements:

• http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/products/compliance/

Community members can contribute tips, movies, code snippets, and more with easy-to-use templates. Contributions are moderated by community experts. Plus, everyone in the community can rate and comment on contributions.

Contributing is easy
1. Download the Community Publishing AIR application.
2. Author your content using a simple template.
3. Publish it to Adobe.com.

Content goes live within minutes and is automatically added to community help search. Exceptional contributions will be promoted in Help & Support pages, Developer Connection, Design Center, and considered for inclusion in Adobe partner publications.

You can see all of the submissions here: Community Publishing index page.

So give it a try. I'll link to especially good contributions in Acrobat Help.

Specifically, Acrobat.com Ideas was recognized for embracing social technologies among a business-to-consumer audience. The award is based on the the concept, "Embracing the Groundswell," a phrase coined by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li. The groundswell, the wisdom of the crowd - all of this is about engaging customers with social technologies to help design products that are timely and responsive to real users' needs.

Our friends at BrightIdeas have been instrumental in making this site a success. We're excited to see the recognition for both companies.

And of course, we're looking forward to hearing more bright ideas from our users. Thanks for being part of what's next!

Supply-Chain Relationships

According to a 2006 survey of manufacturing executives conducted by IBM, CEOs believe that over 70% of new product innovation comes from customers and suppliers.  In some industries, as much as 95% of the value-added content represented by end-user products comes from from suppliers.  Shouldn’t processes and systems support these supply-chain relationships that can be so vital to success?

Some industries have moved from a traditional model of suppliers manufacturing parts and subsystems from the OEM’s design to deeply incorporating tier one suppliers in the design process. This is a step in the right direction to be sure. Unfortunately supply-chain collaboration often imposes processes, formats and applications on suppliers.   The cost and complexity driven into the supply-chain to access and use needed information can be prohibitive. 

Relational product creation seeks to address these shortcomings.  By sharing contextual information, relying upon open standards and enabling process interoperability through information interoperability, Relational Product Creation can take new product development to a much greater level of performance.  Horizontal collaboration and interoperability are the keys.  

PDF Provides the “Container” for Interoperability and Contextual Collaboration

Imagine a world in which information is shared horizontally and vertically across the entire value chain in a totally secure manner.  Imagine that all of the up-to-date information is available securely to “trusted partners” to access and use. Imagine that information format barriers no longer exist fundamentally representing an opportunity for true collaboration.

PDF is a super container for virtually any 2D or 3D information that needs to be shared between suppliers and OEMs.  Adobe and its partner companies are addressing the needs of companies that choose to more to the Relational Product Creation Model.  Here’s how:

Many people associate PDF with the static presentation of 2D information, usually at the conclusion of an authoring and approval cycle.  PDF is chosen in those instances because of its ability to “lock” the contents so they cannot be altered later.  People may know that PDF is already the ISO 32000 Open Standard for Engineering Information, but they may not fully comprehend the power of PDF.  However, the presentation layer not only supports text and graphics, but audio and video content and fully interactive 3D models.

The 3D models represent data extracted from virtually any 3D format, and can contain the product structure, precise and tessellated geometry, product manufacturing information and attribute data.  Data can also be extracted, depending upon security settings, in standard formats including Parasolid, IGES, STEP, VRML, U3D and STL. 

All of these data types can also be combined into informal and higher-end workflows for things like product creation collaboration, supplier collaboration, field service and manufacturability.  JavaScript and XML forms data can interact to support extensions of processes across the entire extended enterprise, and the ultimate user requires is the ubiquitous, free Adobe Reader to interact with data that once would have required specialized applications.

Lastly, security is fully comprehended.  Security can be enabled through password and certificate encryption, but LiveCycle Rights Management can provide dynamic access control, manage permissions, monitor activity, manage revisions and even revoke information anywhere it may be shared.  PDF fully supports digital signatures, so authenticity is never an issue.

I realize that this article is high-level.  In future articles, I will be focusing on each of these areas in more detail to explore examples and customer successes.