To view any Portable Document Format (PDF) you need a copy of
Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is freely available if you do not
already have a copy on your computer.
Clicking on a PDF link will open the file in a new browser
window, where you can view or print the file.
If you click the PDF link with the right mouse button you will
be given various options, one of which is to 'Save Target As....',
if you select this option you can save the PDF file to your
computer hard drive, and view the file whenever you wish.
PDF with Firefox
If you have a Firefox Extension called PDFDownload and have
version 7 of Adobe Acrobat reader installed on your system, you
will not be able to correctly download PDF documents.
You will need to uninstall PDFDownload from Firefox and this
should correct the problem.
To do this, go to 'Tools' > 'extensions' and select the
PDFDownload extension, then click on 'Uninstall'
Accessibility of PDFs
If you cannot use Acrobat Reader to see these documents (for
example, if you use screen reader software or an audio-enabled web
browser), Adobe provides a free online tool which converts them to
text.
To use this service, send the web address (URL) of the Adobe
Acrobat document you want to read through the web form listed
below.
The service will return the document to you as a web page (HTML)
or as plain text.
Alternatively you can choose to get it emailed to you as an
attachment.
Adobe provides information about accessibility and adobe
products, and Acrobat Reader 7 has a number of accessibility
features.
Searching within a PDF
When you open a PDF file, a toolbar will appear (below the
address bar if opened in a browser window), featuring a number of
tools to help you view and search the document.
Moving your mouse/cursor over the icons (without clicking) will
tell you what each of them does.
Especially useful is the Find tool (depicted by a pair of
binoculars)
- Click on the Find icon to search the document for a word or
phrase.
- Click the next icon to the right to search for further
occurrences of the word or phrase.