User:Heather Lubalin/sandbox

CommonLook is a family of application software developed by NetCentric Technologies to create, verify, correct and manage accessibility features in documents including Microsoft Office documents and Portable Document Format (PDF) documents and forms.

The family consists of CommonLook Office, a plugin for Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, CommonLook PDF, a plugin for Adobe Acrobat Professional and CommonLook Clarity, a stand-along website scanning product. All are proprietary commercial software.

History
PDF files were inherently inaccessible until 2000. With the release of Adobe Acrobat 5 it became possible to add tags to PDF files to ensure correct logical reading order and content semantics.

First launched in 2003, NetCentric’s CommonLook software was the first 3rd party commercially available PDF editor specifically designed to address accessibility.

The CommonLook plugin for Adobe Acrobat was NetCentric’s first accessibility product. In 2007 NetCentric introduced the Enterprise Compliance Management Framework (ECMF), and in 2009 launched the PDF Accessibility Wizard (PAW) for Microsoft Word.

In 2010, NetCentric’s CommonLook reports became part of the official HHS Section 508 compliance checklist.

Product names
NetCentric has used the CommonLook name since its first commercial desktop software was developed to assist Canadian government agencies meet the Canadian Federal government’s requirements for a “Common Look And Feel” in government documents and publications.

, the current members of the CommonLook family are:


 * CommonLook Office for Microsoft Word
 * CommonLook PDF
 * CommonLook Clarity

Version 1.0
CommonLook 1.0 was originally released in 2003 for Windows XP. This application was the first outside of Adobe Acrobat to allow end-users to manipulate the tags tree in PDF files. A basic table editor was also included.

Version 4.x
“’CommonLook PDF 4.0” was originally released in 2009 for Windows XP through 7. The current shipping version is 4.2.2.

Language availability
CommonLook products are currently available in US English, however other versions are planned.

An Oklahoma version is also available with features specific to the laws of that state.