Providing accessible documents is not only a legal requirement. It’s also good customer service. Once you tag your files for accessibility, the best way to ensure compliance is to put them through a rigorous quality control process. This is true whether you provide one-off remediation or you’re implementing an accessible e-presentment solution for your transactional material.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are an estimated 285 million people worldwide who are blind or partially sighted, with 39 million being blind and 246 million having low vision. (Medicine).
We are pleased to announce the release of CrawfordTech version DTE 4.12. DTE or Digital Transform Engine, which is the core software infrastructure used in all Crawford Technologies’ print and document conversion and enhancement solutions.
If you’ve been tasked with implementing accessibility in your organization you’ll know that there are many questions to consider. Which formats should you offer your customers? Should you prioritize certain document types and what should you do about legacy content? These are all valid questions but one of the most important considerations is whether your files will be remediated at- or post-composition. So how do you determine which is the best approach to take?
There’s no question that documents and web content need to be made accessible, but there is much debate about which formats to offer. For instance, when should organizations provide Accessible PDF and when should they focus on HTML? One reason for this ongoing debate is that there are several myths about which of these two formats is “better”.
Document accessibility discussions tend to focus on how to comply with the various standards and guidelines for a given format, and rightly so. Making your documents accessible is essential, but there are also some bigger picture issues to consider.
Chances are you are already dealing with document remediation, or making documents accessible, if you are creating documents that will be shared in the digital world. If you are not dealing with remediation but do share documents digitally, then you might want to consider looking into it as rules and regulations are consistently increasing and getting stricter, making it a requirement.
Have you been tasked with implementing document accessibility in your organization? Are you looking for a solution that can handle a wide range of accessible formats and document types? CrawfordTech’s AccessibilityNow platform provides high levels of automation and integration into any environment. The platform includes software solutions and a wide range of services that can meet the document accessibility needs of any organization. This comprehensive platform supports the unique processing requirements of high-volume transactional documents as well as static content of all types.
If you work in the field of accessibility you will inevitably find yourself needing to refer to various disabilities, or to the people who have them. Politically correct language is not new, yet there is still a lot of confusion as to which terms are acceptable and which are not. And as if this were not enough, there are a host of clichés and idiomatic expressions that make mention – usually with negative connotations – of people with disabilities. So how do you discuss things like assistive technology and accessible documents while navigating what might feel like a linguistic minefield?
As businesses and organizations move more of their customer interactions online, web accessibility is now reaching the top of the enterprise priority list in Europe. Ensuring equal access for disabled users to websites and other important customer communications, is being driven not only by recent changes in EU legislation, but also by the size and strength of the market itself – some $6 trillion of disabled spending power globally. In Europe, 30 million people currently live with blindness or a visual impairment and approximately 80 million with a disability. With these figures set to triple by 2050 and new EU Accessibility legislation taking effect in the coming months, businesses that have a comprehensive digital accessibility strategy in place will be sure to see the greatest success.
