I need to provide some security of pdf page by disable the toolbar, no right click, no text selection, no cope-paste. Can anyone please tell me how to achieve this ?
I don't think you can do it. To my knowledge there is now way to programatically disable the toolbars or any of the features you are describing. And it is certainly the wrong way of providing security to a document. Maybe you should look at alternative formats.
As a general rule of thumb, if someone can see it on their computer, they can duplicate it.
It is not possible to disable the toolbar or right-click functionality in Adobe Reader (or any other reader) -- this is not a feature of the PDF specification . However, it is possible to disable content (text, images, etc) copying using a number of different PDF libraries. You can also prevent printing, page extraction, document modifications, etc.
Two PDF developer libraries that would offer you this functionality are:
Quick PDF Library
Solid Framework
Related
I'm curious how to make an accessible button for screen readers which downloads PDF.
I know that there is an option using href and pass there an URL to the pdf file, and even a download attribute inside an anchor to open a download window.
But it's not a good way for a screen reader. The screen reader reads it as a link but actually, this is not a link because it triggers downloading a pdf file rather than redirect to another page. So this can be confusing for people with vision disorders who rely on their screen readers.
Is it a good accessibility way to create such a button? Or relying on <a href='path-to-pdf'>...</a> is completely enough and not confusing for people with disabilities ?
General answer and basics of file download
Both a link and a button are perfectly fine, it doesn't make much difference.
IN any case, it's very important to explicitly indicate that the link or button is going to download a file rather than open a page, to avoid surprise.
The simplest and most reliable is just to write it textually, i.e. "View the report (PDF)".
You may also put a PDF icon next to the link to indicate it, but make sure to use a real image, i.e. <img alt="PDF" /> and not CSS stuff, since the later may not be rendered to screen readers and/or don't give you the opportunity to set alt text (which is very important).
A good practice is also to indicate the file size if its size is big (more than a few megabytes), so that users having a slow or limited connection won't get stuck or burn their mobile data subscription needlessly.
It's also good to indicate the number of pages if it's more than just a few, so that people can have an idea on how big it is, and if they really can take the required time to read it.
Example: "View the report (PDF, 44 pages, 17 MB)"
Note that similarly, that's a good practice to indicate the duration of a podcast or video beforehand.
Additional considerations with PDF
First of all, you should make sure that your PDF is really accessible. Most aren't by default, sadly.
You should easily find resources on how to proceed to make a PDF accessible if you don't know.
Secondly, for an accessible PDF files to be effectively read accessibly, it has to be opened inside a real PDF reading program which supports tagged PDFs, like Adobe Reader.
The problem is that nowadays, most browsers have an integrated PDF viewer. These viewers usually don't support tagged PDFs, and so, even if you make an accessible PDF, it won't be accessible to the user if it is open inside that integrated browser viewer.
So you must make sure that your link or button triggers an effective download or opening in a true PDF reading program, rather than opening in an integrated viewer of the browser.
Several possibilities that may or may not work depending on OS/browser to bypass the integrated viewer. They have to be tested to make sure they work:
Send a header Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="something.pdf"
Send a Content-Type different than "application/pdf" or "text/pdf", e.g. "application/octet-stream" to fake out basic type detection
Make the link don't ends with .pdf
Use the download attribute of <a>
The most reliable are response headers. Most browsers don't rely only on file extension alone to decide what to do.
Either a link or a button is fine. The most important thing is that the user is informed about what the element does - i.e. it downloads/opens a PDF file. So, this should be reflected in the element's label, whether that is a visible text label or an icon that uses alt text or aria-label to explicitly describe the element's purpose.
I agree with Quentinc's suggestion to also inform the user upfront about the number of pages and size of the document - that's a nice touch that I don't see very often!
PDF accessibility is a whole other topic, but again as QuentinC points out, there's not much good in allowing a user to download or view a PDF that isn't accessible, so it's a good idea to ensure the PDF has been tested against JAWS/NVDA/VoiceOver/TalkBack to ensure it is readable.
I am wondering if there is a way to edit pdf file (generated by Adobe Illustrator) in a web browser? They types of 'edit' that I'm after such as reposition element, changing color, changing text...etc and finally save the edited file.
iText seem like a good framework but not sure about it's capability.
Theoretically this is possible. But it would mean you would have to use a client-side PDF library capable of doing such edits. Such libraries are not common; in fact the only one I know of that could enable you to write something like this is created by PDFTron (https://www.pdftron.com).
(I know nothing more about that product; haven't used it or looked at it in detail)
I am working on a website providing massive amount of PDFs for download and I am trying to improve the website accessibility. All I can think of is:
Provide equivalent content for the PDFs when possible (text or HTML for example).
Provide description for the PDF documents before the use can download them.
Make it possible to search within the PDF files when the users use the website search.
Make the links to the PDFs labelled by a nice icon.
Inform the users that they will need a third party application (Acrobat or other PDF viewers) in order to open the documents.
Are there other ways to improve it?
Like Jared said, assistive technology works decently with PDFs. The question is what kind of quality control do you have. There is a few different ways of putting together a PDF. One way is scanning a document and the result is a PDF made out of images. When assistive technology hits it, all it says is image image image, great help right?
Now Adobe built in an Optical Character Recognition ability (second way), which has improved over the years, but is far from quality. For example, I was given a PDF that had OCR on it. One of the first lines had the word Articles, in italics, the OCR spit out Art/e5. The third way is to produce PDFs containing actual text. Now Office 2007/2010, have the ability to save as a PDF. Before hitting save, click the options button and ensure the "document tags for accessibility" box is checked.
PDFs have a tag structure, like HTML, found via the Tags panel/pane. The output in 2010, is a bit cleaner than 2007, but I still recommend something like Commonlook Office to create your PDFs.
4.Make the links to the PDFs labelled by a nice icon.
You could put an icon within the link. Some people do:
Link text <img src=".." alt="PDF icon"/>
Some people using assistive tech just browse via links, so they won't know it is a PDF before they open it. So, it is better to do:
Link text <img src="" alt="PDF"/>
5.Inform the users that they will need a third party application (Acrobat or other PDF viewers) in order to open the documents.
It is a good idea to do this, in fact Section 508 requirements say to do this. I recommend linking to Adobe Reader for two reasons.
1- if the person does not have a PDF viewer, they'll probably call their "computer expert" who probably heard of Adobe Reader, and knows the site isn't pushing some ad-ware.
2- Adobe Reader has the most built-in accessibility of the readers out there, to my knowledge. So, why would you not give the best.
There are several things you can do to improve the accessibility of the PDFs themselves.
Provide "Alternate Descriptions" for images
Provide "Replacement Text" for items such as equations or abbreviations
Replacement Text can also be used to hint at the pronunciation of names
Mark the language, especially if it is mixed
This will assist a screen reader in properly understanding the PDF. This isn't crucial for pages that contain only text in regular paragraph layout - the reader can usually figure things out. If there are pictures, captions, jargon, names, etc, this will greatly improve the reader's performance.
I'm looking for accessibility tool , to make it easier to read pdf's.
In short, it should be possible to easily see which line is being read ( a bit like a ruler,when it comes down to text ), to avoid losing the line that is being read.
I was wondering if anyone knows any solution for this , for example a plugin for Adobe Acrobat Reader, etc...
Any suggestions are welcome.
I don't think there is a plug-in for Acrobat Reader. You may want to look at ZoomText or ClaroRead. Of course these only work if the PDF has text, but not images of text.
A low tech solution would be to open a Notepad doc and size it how you need. If you are on Win7 you could do this with sticky notes.
Another approach I've used is to convert the PDF to HTML and then run a server with it. This is fairly simple to accomplish using Live Server in VScode.
In the Chrome browser, we may then use accessibility extensions, such as ReadingBuddies, that have reading ruler functions.
Otherwise consider,
Use a PDF reader that has a built-in reading ruler feature, such as Adobe Acrobat Reader DC or Foxit Reader.
Use a PDF reader that allows you to add a reading ruler as an annotation, such as Xodo PDF Reader.
Use an online tool that allows you to view PDFs with a reading ruler, such as Smallpdf's PDF Reader.
Use a screen ruler tool, such as the one offered by How-To Geek, to measure the PDF on your screen.
The academic term is sometimes called RSVP (Rapid Serial Visual Presentation), there are patented hardware and software versions but in principle it is simply a translucent masking added to the viewport. see https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/28582/is-there-an-equivalent-to-a-reading-guide-strip-for-windows-os-x-or-linux and http://www.see-n-read.com/products/esee-n-read-2/
10 years later and its 2023 so software such as browsers should include such features here is Edge in some sites where Immersive Reader is supported but not StackOverflow !! The above example is using an edge extension. https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/screen-mask/dfanfcmhbdocjfpmnoebccndgmhlincl others are available for other browsers https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reading-ruler/phiedfcbjfjagnjikfbobmldbpmdcpfk
To get the Reader Mode options on Chrome: or Edge look at the available flags
However if you save page as PDF and read aloud it is then used there !
Some PDF readers like Mac Skim include such accessibility option.
However, simplest is :-
Most PDF readers can be reduced to focus viewport on single lines and with auto scrolling that allows for more focused "line by line" reading without the audio, plus fast and easy adjustments/enlarging for PDF variable lines with illustrations.
Note as per above PDF where much of the text is actually one or two lines out of order it is not trivial for a PDF reader to understand which text base line is independently to be used next. in reality "Read Aloud" will read two variable height lines then jump to top of page then back to the second visible line. PDF lines are not the visible order nor a constant height/spacing, you might expect.
Is it possible to disable the pdf toolbar when generating a pdf from a Jasper Report?
Is your PDF being opened by an external PDF Reader, like Adobe or Foxit?
If so, then I don't think so, this is the toolbar of the application itself.
On the other hand you can use PDF Viewer, a viewer that comes integrated with JasperReports. This one you can control. But then you will limit the user if he wants to do anything with the PDF.
In my own experience, I way keep it. If you remove it, the customer will soon ask for tools to zoom in and out, and maybe even to annotate.