Accessibility Meets Mobility: Review of M-Enabling Summit 2014

First published on G3ict.

I attended the third edition of the M-Enabling Summit on Accessible Mobile Technology for Seniors and Users of All Abilities, this year in Washington, D.C. Here is my quick review of the event highlights.

How important is mobile technology?

To answer that, you need to consider not only the mobile usage of your friends and colleagues – who, if they’re anything like mine, probably pull out their smart phones and tablets every chance they get – but also the usage of mobile technology around the world. That includes developing countries and rural areas, where the placement of cellular service towers and affordable mobile devices have given even remote and underdeveloped communities access to goods and services via the internet. This global access has opened up commerce for a market that now reaches all corners of the world.

Mobile technology has become incredibly important from both a social and commercial perspective – ensuring more widespread access to services, information and products. But its new prevalence also highlights the importance of making the technology accessible to everyone – including seniors and individuals with disabilities, particularly visual and hearing impairments.

It’s with that in mind that in June this year, I attended the 3rd annual M-Enabling Summit in Washington, DC. (check out event proceedings).

Enabling Everyone
Focused on “accessible mobile technology for senior citizens and users of all abilities,” the M-Enabling Summit this year featured discussions on everything from social media and web search accessibility, to mobile accessibility as it relates to commerce. Accessibility on the mobile front is an area Actuate is interested in examining further, so I went hoping to learn more about trends in the field. I wasn’t the only one either: a who’s who of the accessibility thought leaders attended, coming from both the private and public arenas – including representatives from the big telcos and cable providers, and financial institutions and – the likes of AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon, Comcast, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Scotia Bank; Technology leaders Adobe, Microsoft, Yahoo, and IBM were onboard, as were several federal government agencies and non-profit disability advocacy groups. For a conference with an estimated 500 attendees, it was certainly a highly concentrated and focused accessibility group!

So, why this focused accessibility attention on mobile technology? After all, a significant segment of potential mobile customers have disabilities, including those with low or no vision. In fact, according to the World Health Organization, approximately 285 million people around the world are estimated to be visually impaired – of those,  90% live in developing countries, where mobile devices may be their only way of participating in online commerce. Approximately 82% are 50 or older, meaning seniors also have a vested interest. Those customers don’t want to have to rely on someone else looking over their shoulder, having access to and reading their personal information. They want solutions that enable them to get information independently. And they want to – and have the right to – participate in commerce and make payments on their phones and tablets the same as everyone else does.

One of the sessions I attended at the summit – called Making Mobile Payments Accessible – examined just that. The panelists estimated that within five years mobile payments are likely to become as prevalent as GPS mapping or taking photos with your phone. Building accessible but mobile commerce options, then, is more important than ever.

Summit Highlights 
The event didn’t disappoint. While the session on mobile payments was one of key interest to me, I also sat in on several others. Another was Integrating Accessible Mobile Solutions in the Workplace: Challenges and Opportunities for CIOs, which looked at how CIOs can integrate accessible mobile platforms into the workplace, to include and enhance the productivity of their employees with disabilities. What Corporations Need to Know About Mobile Accessibility Compliance: Latest Rules for the Implementation of the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, meanwhile, examined new regulatory developments regarding the accessibility of mobile devices and services – and how those changes may affect corporations of all stripes.

It was an informative two days that broadened my knowledge of mobile accessibility, and that will hopefully help influence Actuate’s own accessibility efforts going forward. In fact, it may have been my first time attending the M-Enabling Summit, but it definitely won’t be my last. It’s an important, ever-changing field, and I can’t wait to see how it develops!

Accessibility on All Fronts: Creating Accessible Web Content

How are companies today faring when it comes to creating accessible environments for their customers?

The answer is more complicated than you might think. Because if you visit a modern office building, or even take a look at corporate websites, accessibility has obviously become a key ingredient for most businesses today. Companies want all of their customers to be able to reach them, whether that means adding wheelchair ramps to their offices, or accessibility tags to their websites. Those that don’t make the efforts have quickly found that there are hefty legal repercussions and lawsuits waiting for them if they don’t comply.

But to truly be able to access services, information, etc., individuals with disabilities must have a comparable opportunity to go everywhere customers without disabilities can. And that means businesses need more than wheelchair ramps and accessible websites – they need accessible web content as well.

I wrote about exactly this issue in a recent article for Business Solutions magazine, entitled “Creating Fully Accessible Web Content: The Industrial Approach.” The article looked at the changing face of accessible content – from a time when companies required the visually impaired to identify themselves as disabled, and then wait for content to be sent to them in accessible paper formats like Braille, to now, when the visually impaired require and demand immediately  available online content, just like everybody else. To stay compliant – and to keep all of their customers happy – companies need to build new options into all of their online content, including PDF statements, account notices and bills.

For that to become the norm, though, companies need to embrace technology, specifically automation.  They need a technology that’s scalable to their customers’ needs—because building accessibility into these PDF documents manually is too cost and time intensive and simply cannot provide an equivalent or even comparable experience. That means introducing automation with intelligence to maintain standards compliant accessibility rules and formats, to generate these statements, bills and notices accessibly on-demand so that they and readable and usable by those using screen readers.

It’s only once that content becomes easily accessible and usable that companies start to come close to true accessibility – and actual regulatory compliance. But they’ll be one step closer to something else, too: customer loyalty. And that can be a hard thing to find in today’s competitive environment.

If you want to know more about creating accessible web content, read my original article published by Business Solutions Magazine.

Accessible PDFs: Questions, Thoughts and Ideas from a Social Network Exchange

First published on G3ict.org

Should accessible PDF documents be a part of a company’s web accessibility strategy? That’s the question that was posted recently in a LinkedIn web accessibility forum.

The question inspired a lengthy and exciting discussion among accessibility experts from a variety of sectors and roles. What resulted was an informative and multi-faceted conversation that brought up several questions, comments and solutions related to accessible PDFs.

To read the entire LinkedIn exchange, copy and paste this link into your browser:
http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&gid=41800&type=member&item=266438271&trk=groups_search_item_list-0-b-ttl.

For those who just want the quick highlights, I have consolidated a few of the more popular thread themes, questions and ideas that emerged.

PDF Document Accessibility
There was almost full consensus from accessibility experts on the fact that all online PDF documents should be made accessible. Within the LinkedIn discussion, a web accessibility consultant commented that since they’re likely available on a company’s public facing website or customer facing portals, PDFs should be part of a company’s overall web accessibility strategy. “It’s particularly important if that information isn’t available in another format that’s accessible,” a Section 508 accessibility and remediation specialist added. Others pointed out that some companies have gotten around creating accessible PDFs by making the same information available in an accessible HTML format instead.

Keep in mind that whatever the format, when approaching accessibility for what I call the ad-hoc or one-to-many type documents like marketing collateral, publications, informational documents, reports, etc., the approach typically is a manual one whether repairing, touching up or creating accessible PDFs. The key here is to author with accessibility in mind.

What about Archived PDFs?
I also saw a strand of comments regarding whether or not archived PDFs should be available in an accessible format. While many of the contributors in the discussion suggested that ideally they’d like to see historic PDFs made accessible, most saw the process of converting them as too time consuming and cost prohibitive, and in my opinion this is likely, because the traditional approach to making these documents accessible is a manual tagging and repair process that simply couldn’t be applied to such a large volume of archived PDFs.

One researcher in usability and accessibility pointed out that no one would ever look at those documents anyway, while a Section 508 accessibility and remediation specialist stated that converting them would depend on budget, timeliness and importance – otherwise, accessible archived documents could be made available upon request. My opinion here is multi-fold; firstly, whether or not someone would or could look at an archived document shouldn’t be the basis for the decision as to whether it is accessible or not. If the document is made available, it should be made available to everyone, including those with visual disabilities. Traditionally, there hasn’t been a solution that is timely or cost effective that would allow these archived documents to be addressed post-composition, but there is an automated solution on the market now that does just that and produces WCAG 2.0 Level AA compliant PDFs.

“Many companies are mandated – either by internal by-laws or external regulations – to store those historical PDF documents,” wrote my colleague from Actuate. For other companies, allowing customers to access historical documents (including statements or past invoices) may be a value-added service. “Whatever the reason for storing might be, if any time in the future that content needs to be accessed then it goes without saying that it should be accessible,” he added. “That doesn’t mean that organizations have to store the content in an accessible format for the lifespan of the document, but rather can employ a solution to automatically convert documents on-the-fly/on-demand.” This is very exciting since the solution mentioned here is a patented and fully deployed solution performing this very process for very large financial institutions today. It can and is being done!

What about PDF/A format for archived documents?
Many PDFs kept for historical purposes are stored in this format, a Section 508 assistant coordinator pointed out. PDF/A formats have a stricter structure that allows them to remain backward and forward compatible, he added. Could PDF/A formatting get in the way when it comes to accessibility? My colleague responds, “No, it didn’t “negate or hinder … capabilities to provide that content in an accessible format (meaning this format too would work for a solution that applies accessibility tagging or PDF remediation on demand) when the content is requested.” There are exceptions, of course – not every document can be made accessible post production, depending on how it’s been authored or formatted – but a large number can be, without the need to re-author them.

Accessible HTML Instead of PDFs?
A marketing communications consultant pointed out that HTML isn’t always appropriate. For example, it is not appropriate in the case of very long documents or for those that will be distributed mainly through print. A Section 508 assistant coordinator added that if it’s the PDF that’s going to be widely distributed, it should still be available in an accessible format.

I hear this HTML question posed to me frequently, and agree that in many cases HTML or XML is the best format when the content (code) is designed accessibly. HTML and XML typically pose less accessibility issues for assistive technologies like screen readers, particularly for web content. But what about the case of high-volume, electronically-delivered, customer communication documents, like bank statements, telco bills, medical notices, etc.? That is the question I pose and it is a leap for many to consider.

This content is usually presented as PDF and can quickly add up to millions of pages or even hundreds of millions of pages per month, per organization and is therefore in a different category of challenges, mostly due to sheer volume. The typical approach to making PDFs accessible is to design with accessibility in mind, convert to PDF, then check and touch up the PDF– which is the repair or remediation process – and it simply doesn’t fit or scale for statement type PDF documents. They’re also typically not available in HTML or XML, since PDFs are usually the format of choice and are often required for archival and regulatory compliance purposes.

Additionally, large organizations producing these types of communications have often invested heavily in their technology infrastructure with sophisticated software that transforms the data – like names, account numbers, marketing ads, etc. – into print files that get turned into paper communications and also into PDFs for online presentment. So providing accessible HTML/XML in this case may not be a solution. There is now a technology solution that works within the IT enterprises and allows for every PDF to be created completely accessible automatically (to WCAG 2.0 Level AA conformance), so now these companies can include all their e-delivered PDF communications as part of their overall web accessibility strategy.

That’s just a small sample of some of the discussions exchanged on LinkedIn around PDF accessibility as part of an oveall web accessibility strategy – along with a few of my opinions on the topics posed. Thank you to all who provided great insight into the accessibility issues with PDF. I hope we can continue to have more of these types of conversations on social media with lots of industry experts sharing their insights! Please connect with me on LinkedIn or via Twitter.

See more on PDF Accessibility:

» PDF accessibility using PDF/UA format: PDF/UA: What is it? Why is it relevant?

» PDF Association’s PDF/UA Competence Center