The PDF Accessibility Solution designed for automatic tagging of high-volume customer documents creates accessible PDFs that are readable by assistive screen reader technology. It allows organizations to provide accessible documents to their visually impaired customers on-demand, meet US federal regulations for accessibility and engage in an inclusionary practice.
I have received some questions about the scope of this market. Ultimately – does the visually impaired community need this? Is this a problem when a credit card statement is not available online and on-demand for some and is available for others?
Q: How many customers could a PDF Accessibility Solution potentially help?
Approximately 3.3 million Americans over 40 are blind or have low vision. That number is only growing. In the next decade it’s expected to soar up to 5 million. Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, 4% of the population has vision-related problems. For financial institutions, that means if at least 1% of their customer base has some kind of visual impairment, together they will need a significant number of accessible documents every year. In a bank with 2.5 million customers, for example, at least 25,000 customers would require document accessibility services, for a total of almost 1 million accessible documents annually.
Q: How should banks or other companies approach accessibility? Should visually impaired clients have to identify themselves or prove that they need this service?
For the traditional alternate formats that people have come to expect – Braille, large print and audio – yes, someone would have to identify their need and ask directly, in order to receive personalized statements in custom formats that would meet their needs. For remediated electronic statements that is also true: customers are asked to opt-in.
However, it’s preferred that an individual with disabilities not have to identify him or herself if they don’t wish to. The new PDF Accessibility Solution helps accomplish this, requiring fairly little on the part of the business institution to produce accessible statements that are equally usable by customers with or without disabilities – and are available on-demand and online. That means a customer does not have to identify him or herself or carry the burden of trying to figure out how to ask for an accessible document from the organization or financial institution in question.
Would you agree that print and reading-disabled individuals should have an option to receive accessible documents on-demand?
PDF Accessibility 