PDF Files:
Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view or print PDF documents and can be downloaded free of charge from Adobe.
Adobe also provides tools for the blind and visually impaired to access PDF documents. These tools are available at: http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/
PDF is a graphically oriented file format designed for electronic interchange; it was developed by Adobe Systems Inc. for use with its Acrobat software. In a PDF file, any page in a publication can be displayed or printed by a user in a form virtually identical to the page that appeared in the publication (including richly formatted text, graphics, and colours). PDF files can be enhanced with hyperlinks to other parts of the document, to other files, to other addresses on the World Wide Web, and to other applications. Adobe has released a free Acrobat reader for PDF files. With the Acrobat reader, a user can view and print PDF files; in addition, a user can extract text into ASCII or Rich Text Format (a file format that preserves some of the font and formatting characteristics of a document) and perform searches on the document.
Zipped Files:
Reports comprising sets of files are provided in archive (.zip) format and may be opened with a program such as Winzip, PKUNZIP or NetZip. This type of software is often available on the internet as freeware or shareware.