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Re: Inquiry Regarding Handling PDF Accessibility Challenges in School District Practices

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From: chagnon@pubcom.com
Date: Dec 6, 2023 11:35AM

We've worked with many universities/colleges and local school districts on their materials.

The best solution is to make better, more accessible source documents, and export them to accessible tagged PDF. Depending on the document's complexity (tables, lists, footnotes, etc.), you should have a better PDF that doesn't need much remediation at all. Some call this "born accessible."

Remediating and fixing crappy PDFs is a royal PITA — pain in the "anatomy" — that wastes everyone's time and money.

"Born accessible" is a critical workflow strategy for those who must frequently update source documents and make them "live" on websites for public use.

Feel free to contact me directly if you'd like more information. We're here to help!

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Bevi Chagnon | Designer, Accessibility Technician | <EMAIL REMOVED>
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PubCom: Technologists for Accessible Design + Publishing
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Upcoming classes at www.PubCom.com/classes
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-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Mark Berning
Sent: Wednesday, December 6, 2023 10:39 AM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: [WebAIM] Inquiry Regarding Handling PDF Accessibility Challenges in School District Practices

Hello,

I am reaching out to seek advice and insights on a PDF accessibility challenge our school district is currently facing.

In our district, we regularly post PDFs online for both contract bids and school lunch nutrition data. The nature of these documents varies, with contract bid PDFs often containing hundreds of pages and extensive technical data, including graphs, charts, tables, schematics, and technical drawings—resembling maintenance manuals for industrial equipment. These documents are typically replaced every few weeks with new ones from updated contract bids, making remediation a challenging task. I am aware of third-party services such as PlanetBids that serve as online repositories for RFP documents. However, the documents are still not considered accessible.

Additionally, we routinely upload 300-400 pages of school lunch nutritional data tables every month. While these are comparatively easier to remediate, the sheer volume poses a significant challenge as they are replaced monthly.

Assuming these documents are required to be posted online, do you have experience or insights into similar situations? I would greatly appreciate hearing about your approaches to posting and PDF remediation.

Thank you in advance for your time and assistance.

Best regards,
--
Mark Berning
Web Developer
Escondido Union School District
<EMAIL REMOVED>
x10176
760-432-2191