The Missing Twenty: A Discussion with Jonathan Hassell

I have something exciting to announce.

A new book on digital accessibility has hit the shelves. Released in November, Including Your Missing 20% by Embedding Web and Mobile Accessibility was written by Professor Jonathan Hassell, an expert on digital accessibility and inclusion. He’s the director of the London-based consultancy Hassell Inclusion, and is the lead author of the BS 8878 British Standard on Web Accessibility.

But what makes this release particularly exciting for me is that Jonathan and I met months ago to do an interview for the book – and now I can finally tell you about it! In fact, not only is the interview included in the book itself, but will be released on YouTube soon for everyone to see – stay tuned!

Who is the 20 Percent?

What does Jonathan mean by “Your Missing 20%”? It’s simple. Almost 20 percent of the world’s population has some kind of disability, so that’s the market – and potential revenue – companies are ignoring when they don’t consider accessibility or the needs of the disabled in their digital offerings. They’re completely missing out on a segment of the population that is often tech-savvy and has disposable income to spend. It’s a group that can also be very loyal once they do find a company that meets their accessibility needs.

Jonathan’s book looks at the real benefits of reaching out to this audience – not just to avoid lawsuits, but in order to penetrate a new market. “It’s about recognizing that no product is ever going to be usable to all users, and finding a reasonable, justifiable way of balancing the resource costs of inclusion against the benefits. And it’s about letting your users know when you’ve not been able to fully support their needs,” the book’s summary relays. “Fundamentally, it’s about understanding the challenges of inclusion, and solving them in creative ways, to gain a bigger audience so your product is more successful.”

Talking Inclusion

During my interview with Jonathan, we focused on PDF accessibility, and the need for PDFs that are accessible to the disabled community, including the blind and visually impaired. We talked about my own personal interest in the subject, and how that evolved, and then Jonathan asked about bank statements and other transactional type customer communications – PDF documents that many of us rely on in today’s digital world.

These are often the documents we require when applying for a mortgage or buying a car, or for any number of other tasks that require an official record. If you’re visually impaired, though, you don’t want to ask for sighted assistance to read through your personal documents to track down the information you need. That’s an invasion of privacy no one would enjoy. You want to be able to get to those official records yourself. And the answer is accessible PDFs.

Accessible PDFs are readable through screen reader technology, and can also act as an official statement of record for bank transactions, insurance claims, etc. But for companies, manually tagging those PDFs to make them accessible is time consuming and labor intensive. Yet a screen reader needs to know how to read the document, and someone has to tell it.

Someone, that is, or something. Because, as I explained to Jonathan, a more scalable solution is one that uses technology to automatically offer accessibility on-demand.

Accessible Solutions

For companies creating high-volume documents, the ideal tool would allow you to assign all the accessibility rules just one time and have the technology solution build high-volume documents from there, even with all the  individualized data attached. This type of technology is adjustable to the needs of governments, insurance groups, telecommunications companies, banks, and any company  that sends out high-volume, repeatable (transactional) documents. It allows those who are blind and visually impaired to automatically access documents digitally – and instantly, the same way everyone else does. There is no need for someone to manually convert each document and for the end user to wait for it to arrive. In other words, companies are meeting the needs of the 20%, without huge costs financially.

Jonathan and I had a great opportunity to discuss all of this. But he finished the interview by asking a final question. “Is there one opportunity or threat to the accessibility of web content for people with disabilities that you think will be most important in the future?” he asked.

Want to know my answer? The video of our interview is available here, but you can read the book right now to find out.

Accessibility and Government-Produced PDFs

First published on G3ict.org

Government agencies are huge creators of high-volume personal communications. Tax documents, benefits and health statements, and other critical information is distributed everyday – and the U.S. federal government aims to deliver more and more of these digitally, cutting costs and making them easier for citizens to obtain. Yet, to reach all citizens, they need to ensure these digital documents are accessible to everyone – including the visually impaired.

Through the accessibility conferences and events I’ve attended – including Freedom Scientific’s recent Annual Accessibility Showcase – I’ve had a chance to speak to many government audiences. They’re wrestling with how to best create equal access in the digital documents they distribute – as well as meet compliance with their own Section 508 accessibility standards – which is why I wanted to address the issue here. Government accessibility, after all, is about to become even more important, as the U.S. federal government initiates its ICT Refresh – an update of the Section 508 Standards and Guidelines, issued under the amended Rehabilitation Act.

What will the changes to Section 508 cover?
Section 508 standards mandate federal government agencies on how they procure, use, develop or maintain information and electronic technology – and aims to make this information accessible to people with disabilities. The update is expected to tighten accessibility regulations further, bringing them up to standards outlined in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. It’s also expected to include a full scope of communications not currently specified including:

• Public-facing content
• Content that is broadly disseminated within the agency
• Letters adjudicating any cause within the jurisdiction of the agency
• Internal and external program and policy announcements
• Notices of benefits, forms, questionnaires and surveys
• Emergency notifications
• Formal acknowledgements
• Educational and training materials

What is expected to be exempt from covered content would include:

• Archival copies stored or retained solely for archival purposes to preserve an exact image of a hard copy
• Draft versions of documents

Although Section 508 is a mandate for federal government, it has had a trickle-down effect into the private sector as well. That is solely due to the procurement regulations. With federal government constituting the largest consumer of electronic and information technology, those supplying that technology must make their products, including their documents and documentation, meet Section 508 standards in order to sell it to government. So, the new refresh will apply equally to government agencies, and to companies in all industries and of all sizes that supply to them.

How can government meet these needs?
In my opinion, meeting the need for accessible digital content means two things: creating the right types of documents, and finding the most cost-saving and least invasive way to build accessibility in. With that in mind, consider two things:

1. Many of these government communication documents – from tax notices to health and benefits statements – need to be offered in a digital format that’s accessible as well as portable and secure, in order to be archived for official purposes. While HTML has become a popular way of providing many types of documentation, and has its uses in government as well, it doesn’t meet these criteria. PDFs do.

2. High-volume, personalized communications such as the ones government agencies produce aren’t created by individuals. They’re created by applications that can handle those large volumes. Individually building in accessibility manually after the fact can be expensive and time-consuming – often with extended delivery times versus the instant access through secure web portals afforded to those who don’t require an accessible digital format.

The right technology, though, can help get around these challenges. And it’s why Actuate introduced Cloud508 for federal government.

Cloud508
To meet the needs of government, Actuate recently announced Cloud508 – a collaborative partnership between Actuate, Braille Works and Venatôre – which was specifically designed to meet the stringent security requirements of federal government. Cloud508 automates the generation and remediation of accessible PDF documents on demand and meets Section 508 requirements and WCAG 2.0 standards for accessibility. What’s more, Cloud508, powered with Actuate technology, allows for the automation of traditional formats like Braille, large print and audio, all while reducing costs and significantly speeding up delivery time. Highlights include:

• Automates generation/remediation of accessible PDF documents
• Cloud-based service
• First and only on the market, patented technology
• Secure – meets federal government’s stringent security requirements
• Real time conversion service
• Designed for high volume personalized communications such as tax, health, and benefits notices
• Section 508, WCAG 2.0 Level AA, PDF/UA compliant formats
• Automates and streamlines production of Braille, large print and audio formats

I think it’s the answer a lot of government agencies are looking for as they search for ways to save time, resources, money, and comply with Section 508, all while providing a comparable experience to the blind and visually impaired.

For more information on Cloud508, visit www.cloud508.com.

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

Europe Adopts Accessibility Standards for Public Sector Web Content

Post was first published on Media Access Australia’s AccessIQ.

In February, 2014, the global accessibility movement took a big step forward when the European Parliament approved an important directive on web accessibility.

The new directive defines accessibility targets for the websites of public sector organizations and private sector organizations delivering “public” services such as utilities, healthcare, transportation, telecommunications, and banking. Under the directive, affected organizations must implement accessible websites that comply with WCAG 2.0 Conformance Level AA.

According to the phase-in schedule, new website content, including not just web pages but all content on the site such as PDF documents, must be fully accessible to the WCAG standards within a year, existing content must be retrofitted for accessibility within three years, and live audio must be accessible within five years. It’s up to the EU’s twenty-eight Member States to follow through with appropriate legislation that will achieve these goals.

Twenty-one member states, including France, Spain, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, and the UK, already have web accessibility standards in place. Despite this apparent widespread adoption of accessibility standards, the EU estimates that only one third of the 761,600 public sector websites in Europe are currently accessible (hence the need for a directive).

Keep in mind that, in this context, the term “website” refers to all online content including PDF documents. PDF documents can typically be divided up into two broad categories:

• Low volume
  “One-off” content such as ad hoc documents (e.g., brochures, collateral and other create once – use many type documents),
• High volume
  Personalized e-delivered communications such as statements, notices, invoices, and other account and benefit information communicated in PDF on a regular basis.

When it comes to high-volume e-delivered communications, European organizations need to prepare now for potential legislation that would enforce this directive. With legislation, these agencies and businesses are likely to find themselves all in the same boat: challenged to find a way to address accessibility for the onerous PDF. 

While manual tagging and remediation of PDFs is the traditional path to accessibility, this process just doesn’t scale for many of the organizations that may become affected by this directive. Public sector is notorious for lots of notices and statements like health and tax type documents and those private sector companies delivering public services such as utilities, telecom, and banking will all have statements, bills, etc.

The real issue here is the sheer volume and number of these types of documents generated on an ongoing basis. For example, if a company has 100,000 customers and each document for that customer averages 3 pages, that’s 300,000 pages that would need to be delivered in accessible PDF every billing cycle – say monthly. Now factor in that manually tagging a single page PDF can take anywhere between 10 minutes and sometimes hours, depending on the level of complexity – and usually these types of PDF communications are laden with lots of tables which are the most complex to manually remediate. On the conservative side that’s 50,000 hours of labor – and that’s not just 50,000 hours, but its 50,000 hours every month!

The point here is that manually tagging the documents for accessibility is a laborious effort that is cost and time prohibitive. Typically organizations cannot find a service bureau to assist with such scale of manual document remediation services that has the resources to handle thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions or hundreds of millions of pages every month.

As consumers and businesses both are reliant on technology and the web as the de facto standard for doing businesses, these organizations may soon no longer have the luxury of simply making an “accommodation” for those who request an accessible format. This new directive is expected to spawn legislation that ultimately may have an impact on all websites that offer their customers access to their notices, statements, and bills online. This is something European governments and businesses need to begin proactively preparing and planning for.

I suspect that we may even begin to see committees and other groups emerging in Europe to draw people together in the industry to help solve web accessibility issues, similar to the Australian Web Industry Association (AWIA) and the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) which has integrated accessibility more closely with the Australian government.

In the United States, spawning from the 1998 (effective in 2001) introduction of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act which set accessibility standards and compliance for the US Federal Government for electronic and information technology, we now have a multitude of public organizations (banks, telcos, and insurance mostly) with large, dedicated internal accessibility practices along with most universities, state governments  inasmuch as the federal government agencies for whom the regulations directly affected. Web accessibility has become the new normal.

Meanwhile, and considering that the PDF format isn’t going to go away, and doing business relying on the web isn’t either, it seems these organizations have some research to do. My suggestion is to start researching now, seek out and test some of the enterprise-based technology solutions hitting the market today that automate both the generation of and the remediation of these very high-volume PDF communications.

Accessibility and Health Insurers: What Section 508 and ADA Legislation Mean For Health, Medicaid and Medicare Insurance Organizations

First published on G3ict.org. 

More than ever, health insurance organizations – including Medicare and Medicaid programs – are tackling the issue of online accessibility, including accessible online PDFs. They have to: they face financial penalties and the risk of losing government contracts if they don’t.

Two separate concerns have created this emerging demand: 

1. Like federal government agencies, private health insurers are looking for ways to comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. Since these private organizations have contracted with the federal government (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) to offer the Medicare and Medicaid programs, access to the program must meet this federal regulation. The regulation requires they ensure access to and use of their websites and digital documentation to people with disabilities, including the blind or visually impaired who use screen reader software to visit the web and read their electronic documents. Non-compliance could lead to the loss of lucrative contracts for insurers.

2. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) legislates accessibility in the United States, and currently this legislation doesn’t mention web and web content accessibility specifically, although that may be about to change. Since the 1990s, disabled plaintiffs have triumphed in many structured negotiations, agreements and lawsuits against large private organizations that did not make their website and web content accessible to them. The rulings have generally fallen under the ADA’s Title III which defines “places of public accommodations”. Judges have agreed in these lawsuits that websites and its content are indeed an extension of a brick and mortar business, a public accommodation, for those organizations otherwise required to comply with the ADA. That risk of litigation is likely to increase if a proposal by the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) goes through, asking for an amendment to Title III to update the definition of “places of public accommodation” to definitively include websites and online information. To avoid the potential threat of large settlements, health insurers need to begin implementing measures to make their digital information and communications accessible.

Ensuring compliance for both Section 508 and the ADA means not only creating accessible core content, but making sure that all online PDF documents are also accessible. That includes the thousands of informational PDF documents and collaterals typically associated with Medicare and Medicaid programs on an insurers’ websites, but also includes a more onerous category of PDFs; the e-delivered communications like statements and notices such as billing statements, EOBs (Explanation of Benefits) SBs (Summary of Benefits), etc. Why are these documents such an onerous challenge to make accessible? Traditionally, making PDFs accessible requires a manual tagging approach. Even when a document is created with accessibility in mind and converted to a tagged PDF, those tags still often need to be manually adjusted in order to give a screen reader user full navigation and usability of the document. This is a labor intensive process that can be time and cost prohibitive at high volumes. Since insurers are generating these statements and notices for thousands or even millions of members every month, the page counts can be in the millions, hundreds of millions or even billions, making a manual process simply not scalable.

That’s all changed now, though. New technology exists that can convert these high-volume e-delivered PDF communications on the fly, meeting the Web Content Accessibility Guideline standards (WCAG 2.0 Level AA) and making them accessible to visually impaired customers on demand. By negating the need for manual PDF remediation, this makes creating accessible statements and notices obtainable. Plus it’s more cost effective and far less time consuming, converting a single statement in milliseconds. Now the insurer’s visually impaired customers no longer have to wait for their accessible version, a traditional frustration for those customers who were given less time to make critical health and financial decisions based on information in the documents.

The issue of website and online document accessibility isn’t going to go away for health insurers. To keep contracts and avoid risks of penalties, fines, lawsuits, and brand damage – while ensuring comparable access and opportunity for their blind and visually impaired customers – they’ll need to comply. The right plan of action, with accessibility technology in place, can help them do so.

Are you a health, Medicare or Medicaid insurer? How could new PDF accessibility technology help you strategize your compliance plan moving forward? Offer your thoughts in the comments section below.

Interview with Media Access Australia: What is PDF/UA and Why it is Important

First published on Media Access Australia’s Access iQ.

I spoke with Tim Lohman from Media Access Australia’s Access iQ about document accessibility and the PDF/UA standard before my presentation at CSUN International Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference this past week.

Check out our interview below:

Access iQ (AiQ): What is PDF/UA and why is it important?

Shannon Kelly (SK): PDF/UA is an ISO (International Standards Organisation) standard (14289-1) for the Portable Document Format (PDF) aimed at making PDFs universally accessible (UA). It is a technical standard at the code level giving requirements for how you implement code for PDF readers like Adobe Acrobat, PDF writers like Word, as well as assistive technologies like JAWS. What PDF/UA is not, is a set of best practices. What ends up happening a lot of times is that, if a content author outputs their content to the PDF/UA format; they think that it is automatically converted into an accessible document. That is not true. Matt May from Adobe did a blog on this last summer and he said that the PDF/UA format isn’t the source of accessibility problems, which was true.

AiQ: What were the challenges with accessible documents that led to PDF/UA’s creation?

SK: The biggest challenge was that there were no clear standards for the conversion of native source documents into accessible, tagged PDFs. People may have thought that by clicking a button in Microsoft Word or Adobe InDesign to convert to PDF with an automatic tagging process, that they were creating an accessible PDF. However, unless the native source document was created with accessibility in mind and the document, once converted to PDF, then had the tag structure retouched and manipulated by an editing tool such as Adobe Acrobat Professional, the result was generally a tagged, but poorly navigable or usable document to a blind or visually impaired person using an assistive device such as a screen reader.   Without a  set of technical requirements that address the content (such as from a Word document) being converted, the reader will access the content (such as Adobe Reader) and the compatibility with assistive technologies like screen readers, the result was typically very inconsistent PDF output of auto-tagged documents often with illogical semantics and mark-up. That really resulted in a lack of usability by the screen readers’ users. So what you had was the proliferation of poorly accessible or completely inaccessible PDFs on the web. The case with inaccessible and poorly accessible documents is that, not only do they not serve the community of the blind and visually impaired, but they also do not serve the needs of the general population in the way we have become accustom to accessing data via text search, copy and paste functions, etc.

AiQ: You said earlier that even with the PDF/UA standard that there are still accessibility issues. Are there techniques people can use to avoid these?

SK:  Absolutely. When creating a Word document, ensure that you design the document with accessibility in mind. As an example, the document author would utilise the Table function in Word to create a table, or using the List function to create a list, as opposed to using only tabs and character symbols to create an ad hoc table or list. You can also make sure to define the text using the style formatter for both headings and body, because a heading format in word will translate to a specific heading tag in the PDF/UA. A list properly using the List format in Word will also translate to the proper list tags in PDF/UA. For non-text elements, such as images, you should be certain to provide alternative text descriptions with those images in your Word document. Additionally, you’ll want to use a standard font that conforms to accessibility guidelines such as Arial, Times New Roman, Tahoma, Helvetica or Calibri and also be certain to populate the document properties, as well.

AiQ: Beyond being the right thing to do, are there other reasons businesses and government agencies should be actively producing accessible documents?

SK: Yes, because it is the right thing to do, and government agencies and businesses in many countries are required to conform to regulations, legislation, and accessibility standards for their web and web content including their PDF documents. Today these organisations are pushing the customers toward self-service via the web — governments, telecommunications, healthcare, utilities, insurance providers and banks, for example. That means that access to those kinds of services and e-delivered communications like bills, statements, notices, healthcare information, and banking and financial statements must be made accessible to everyone. There are guidelines, such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, which provides a globally accepted and adopted set of guidelines for accessibility regarding web and web content. Those standards have been adopted now in 17 countries and they offer organisations very specific techniques for making their content — including all PDF documents — available in an accessible and usable fashion.

I’d also point out that, even with the increased use of HTML, the PDF standard is not going away. It will remain the vehicle for organisations to present their data online. The PDF format in some industries is the required archive format to preserve the original document of record. Additionally, most all major financial and insurance organisations have sophisticated enterprise technology that converts into PDF formats massive amounts of data from millions and millions of customers into their statements every month – the larger challenge with accessibility here is the sheer volume, repetition and scale of this PDFs. The PDF format is critical in moving toward universal accessibility.

AiQ: What barriers exist today in making documents more accessible?

SK: Formerly, the only way to make a document accessible was to design it with accessibility in mind, convert it to a PDF format and then open it in an application like Adobe Acrobat Pro and manually tweak those accessibility tags. So the challenge is that this a time-consuming process for an organisation’s one-to-many documents – things like annual reports, marketing collateral etc. But for businesses and government agencies, how can you do that for thousands, millions or tens of millions of documents – such as bills and statements — that you have to e-deliver in PDF form every month? We would argue that you need an automated enterprise-level technology solution like the Actuate PDF Accessibility Solution, which allows these organisations to easily produce accessible documents in high volumes which meet WCAG 2.0 level AA compliance. The advent of the PDF/UA format has enabled the development of this patented new technology that is truly a “game-changer” in the world of high volume, e-delivered customer communication PDFs.

Update on AODA for Document Accessibility

Guest blogger contribution by Doug Koppenhofer. First published on ECM Trends from the Field. 

We’ve been asked to comment on a whirlwind of activity around AODA or the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act. 

In our Fall Document Accessibility Seminar series, we learned that AODA has very specific timelines in place that mandate specific compliance for organizations with over 50 employees. One of the early deadlines just passed, January 1, 2014. By this time, organizations must be WCAG 2.0 Level A compliant and have an accessibility plan outlined and documented. AA compliance accrues to a future date.

This is having some specific impact on organizations which have not put a plan in place, and notably, one of the largest property & casualty insurers in North America recently sent out  a notice to all Ontarian customers informing them that:

“Due to technical limitations, starting December 8^th 2013, most or possibly all documents you view online will no longer be available. Unfortunately, this is a necessary step as we improve the overall accessibility of our site.”

In the age of online customer service in which virtually all organizations not only have extensive website service channels, they actually use the website to reduce more expensive call center traffic. The impact in terms of brand damage and sheer cost we know is huge.

This is completely avoidable. The technology exists to quickly remediate websites, but even beyond that, there is now readily available technology to remediate high volume documents, including insurance documents, insurance cards, policies, bills, notices, claim letters, and the like.

Don’t let this happen! Email me if you would like to attend an Actuate webinar or seminar on document accessibility and find out what you can do!

Not All Documents Are Created Equal

In September 2013, I presented at Actuate’s three-part webinar series (on-demand webinars are available here) with their accessibility consulting partner, SSB Bart Group, dedicated to analyzing various aspects of document accessibility.

In this series, we examined the use of accessible documents in the enterprise, looking at business, legal and industry requirements, core solutions, and high-volume document solutions. But certain sub-topics generated a lot of interest during the webinars and I thought they are worth highlighting here.

One of such topics is the difference between low-volume and high-volume documents in terms of building in accessibility for users with disabilities, including the visually impaired and reading disabled. With more and more customers demanding accessible documents and especially barrier-free PDFs, knowing the difference between how the two types of documents are produced is more important than ever.

• Low-Volume Documents are produced by a content authoring workflow, and are largely static, so content does not change after publication, though they may contain forms or other fillable items. They may be produced in MS Word, Adobe InDesign or another document authoring tool, and updates are also made in that tool, including structure and content changes. Altering the document format or structure is relatively straightforward. Such electronic documents can be found everywhere on the web. For example, if you copy this blog post into Word and save as a PDF – the resulting document will satisfy the definition of a low-volume document. In addition, you can think of static price lists, schedules, annual financial reports published by businesses etc.

• High-Volume Documents are built by software based on templates and business logic, and include dynamic user-specific information. Documents are often generated from large legacy document libraries, print streams or archives, and changing the format or structure is difficult and requires complex multi-level changes. Template updates happen in a visual design tool and changes to structure and content may require overall software changes. High-volume documents are personalized – they are not just created once and used by many. They are also not ad-hoc individual documents like those created by desktop publishing. They are most often used by financial institutions, healthcare organizations, government agencies, and in the telecommunications and insurance industries.

Figure 1. Common high-volume document – bank account statement.

The most common examples of high-volume documents are bank statements (see Figure 1), credit card bills, utility or cell phone bills, personalized insurance policies and other similar documents that contain personalized information of millions of people and are delivered individually to them.

Because they are so different, high-volume documents require different tools when it comes to making them accessible to the print and reading disabled.

Traditionally, companies have manually tagged these documents, accommodating requests from individual customers who would have to wait for their documents to be mailed out in accessible formats such as Braille or Large Print (see my earlier post from PDF Accessibility Q&A series for a discussion of those formats). Those solutions came with their own set of challenges and are no longer the only optimal and demanded options for an increasingly technology-savvy customer base. Today, all people want universal access to information and documents – on-demand and via a device/software of their choice.

New tools are needed to work well specifically for high-volume documents. Such tools must consider universal access requirements and must make documents accessible to everyone and anyone immediately, as opposed to accommodating individuals upon their request, with delays involved and self-identification required. Tools that automate the process can help do this, creating barrier-free documents on-demand and making transactional documents accessible online through screen reader technology. The result, if done right, will be an inclusionary environment for all.