Boston InDesign User Group

Meeting Summary

Authoring Interactive and Accessible PDFs with InDesign
Thu, May 8th, 2008 at 6:00 PM
Massachusetts College of Art

Event Details

On Thursday, May 8, 2008, over 65 Boston Area IDUG members gathered at Massachusetts College of Art to learn about authoring interactive and accessible PDFs in InDesign.

Noha Edell kicked off the meeting by giving the new members a short tour of the InDesign User Group website, highlighting the members benefits and the learning center. She encouraged the guests to join the group so they will stay abreast with the group's activities. She then proceeded to demonstrate how to create interactive PDFs from within InDesign. She showed us how to include navigation items such as hyperlinks, buttons, and rollovers. She also showed us how to add the ever-popular video to a PDF. She ended her presentation with a request from the group on how to create fillable PDF forms using the "Run Form Field Recognition" command from the Forms Menu in Acrobat 8.

Noha recommended the website www.Indesigner.com, specifically episode 42 for the interactivity. Check this out for more information on our meeting topic.

Noha also recommended a book called "Dynamic Media" by Bob Connolly. For more information on this book, go to www.DynamicMediaBook.com. As an InDesign User Group member, you can receive 30% off this book and others like it: Log in at the InDesign User Group website, click on Member Benefits on the left-hand navigation, scroll down the page, and select the Peachpit link. This landing page will give you the coupon code.

After a short break, Andrew Kirkpatrick, Sr. Product Manager, and Greg Pisocky, Accessibility specialist from Adobe, took us through the steps of making our documents more accessible to people with disabilities, especially those with vision problems. Using tools built in to InDesign and Acrobat, we can make our documents literally speak for themselves. Andrew's slide presentation is available for download from the link below.

Thank You

Many thanks to our photographers Liz Thetonia-Feitelberg and Craig Bradley for taking great pictures, to MassArt for providing a great venue, and to Adobe for the great speakers and for the generous software raffle.

Thanks also to Gerald Jiminez (Adobe Student Rep) and Maribeth Macaisa for their assistance, and to Craig Bradley for the great signage.

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Comments from the evaluation sheets

“Noha’s presentation was great - fun and very informative/useful.”

“The meeting got me thinking of all the things I can do with a PDF immediately. I was hoping to just get an idea for what was even possible... so I’m thrilled. The accessibility part was fascinating.”

“Great group. I learn something new each time I attend.”

“Excellent, timely topic.”

“Excellent presentation on interactive PDFs, easy to follow.”

“Two-part format works well to introduce an overview of features. Good info.”

“Interactive PDF info was very interesting. I have a project on my desk right now that I can apply info.”

Next Meeting

Ali Hanyaloglu, Adobe WW Product Evangelist for Acrobat, is joining us on Sept 16th to introduce the new features of the recently announced Acrobat 9.