How Adobe is killing accessibility

Adobe, like so many American companies, has discovered accessibility as a marketing tool. Unfortunately, as can be seen at Google, talk is not followed by action.

Is PDF accessible?

Despite all the standards, PDF is not barrier-free. The results of accessible documents vary between okay and disastrous. One company in particular is responsible for this - Adobe.
Adobe discovered the topic of accessibility late, perhaps too late. At that time, the format was established as a standard. Only gradually did they begin to establish accessibility tools.
To this day, accessibility is not integrated into the DTP workflow. Optimizing a document for print and making it accessible at the same time is not possible. Rather, Adobe has invented perhaps the most complicated process to establish accessibility. You can't do it without special training, regular practice, and a lot of practice. This is Adobe's idea of accessibility. Adobe, a giant corporation, leaves it up to small companies to take care of it, simplify the process, and cleanse it of errors.

Adobe doesn't make accessibility standard

The importance Adobe attaches to accessibility can be seen in its pricing policy: If you want to make PDFs accessible with Adobe's own tools, you need the expensive Acrobat Professional tool. Acrobat Standard does not include the corresponding functions. In other words: Accessible PDFs are not standard for Adobe, but extra expensive. I guess nothing more needs to be said about that.

Accessibility of Adobe Acrobat

The Adobe Acrobat program is not to be confused with Adobe Reader. The latter is for reading and signing documents. Adobe Acrobat is used to edit PDFs and make them accessible, among other things.
Unfortunately, the corresponding tools are not accessible. Adobe has left the business of making documents accessible to the sighted. This is, to put it bluntly, a mockery of the blind and visually impaired. Once again, other people are making money by not being able to use documents in a reasonable way, which is Adobe's own fault, because they have been hogging the issue for many years.
Adobe makes its money by completely controlling the PDF standard and thus keeping the number of tools that can create accessible PDFs small. Except for Acrobat Pro, a hefty €600 per license, hardly any tool is capable of producing accessible PDFs to the PDF UA standard.
No one can blame a company for wanting to make money. But the methods they use to do so can certainly be criticized. Adobe has made the scene dependent on itself and that only to sell even more licenses of its program. The fact that they then boast about doing something for accessibility can be safely dismissed as a publicity stunt.

Adobe mocks accessibility

Now, this could be dismissed as a slip of the tongue: However, Adobe also violates the rules of accessibility with its other products. Flash has not yet reached the level of accessibility that JavaScript has had for ten years.
The communication solution Adobe Connnect is not accessible, although Adobe claims otherwise. So there is probably pure malice behind it.