WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: automatic document testing

for

From: Duff Johnson
Date: Oct 25, 2011 9:54PM

Lucy,

As a practical matter, near-arbitrary input is a very difficult problem for ANY shop where "it's gotta be simple". The content mix you are describing is more typical for a service bureau than (for example) a government agency.

It sounds like these are PDFs for the most part, and you've been asked for a function that, unknown to the bosses, just isn't a few pushbuttons away. That's tough. I know of only two other-than-farce strategies for this situation... presuming that a solution must occur sometime before the faculty gets comfortable making their own properly-tagged PDFs (LOL).

Option 1 - state that the only "simple" solution based on your research is that documents going online are sent to you (or other competent person within the organization) to tag and return to the faculty member in question prior to going online. You'd do as many in-house as you can, outsource the rest. Offer training to interested parties, and encourage such interest. Essentially, sell the administration on the plain fact of the matter, which is that documents have to be checked and corrected before anyone can or should represent them as "accessible". If you sell them on this idea, then you can focus the four steps the faculty are willing to do simply to ensure the documents are prepared properly before they come to you. Happily, this IS relatively easy (a file-naming standard, 1-up scans and alt. text provided for content images would be very nice!)

I've noticed before that this is a powerful way to represent the issue to management. Once they understand that this will mean an (impossible) 1,000 hours of work in a given month (or whatever), they'll get serious about dealing with it.

So I would say, first try communicating in specific terms about the nature of the problem, and let them do the math - literally. They will probably come back to Option 1. Once that fails then...

Option 2 - <cynic-mode> Identify an arbitrary, easily-attainable 'standard' such as "each PDF has tags". Be sure to advise the powers-that-be that it's arbitrary but that's all that can be done in 4 steps, and let it go at that. </cynic-mode> This is, of course, not the spirit of the matter at all, but you shouldn't be responsible for recommending a 'solution' that you know isn't anything of the sort. Someday, a lawyer might want to know where that so-called "standard" came from!

To flag potential problem documents I suggest you offer a short list of tips specific to the types of docs that are typical in your workflow. Complicated pages (in layout terms) are... complicated - provide some examples and explain what makes them so. Scanned document must be OCRed, and the OCR corrected before tagging. Tags must not only be present, but for simply establishing valid reading order, to say nothing of structures such as tables, they are essential, and simply _must_ be validated.

Once they see what "complicated" means in detail, they will better appreciate why the task in question is so large... and the more they realize this, the more they'll have to reassess that "four steps" idea, one way or another.

This doesn't help much, of course, but the truth shall set you free, right?

Best regards,

Duff Johnson

President, NetCentric US
ISO 32000 Intl. Project Co-Leader, US Chair
ISO 14289 US Chair
PDF Association Vice-Chair

Office: +1 617 401 8140
Mobile: +1 617 283 4226
<EMAIL REMOVED>
www.net-centric.com

This e-mail message is confidential, may be privileged and is intended for the exclusive use of the addressee(s). Any other person is strictly prohibited from disclosing, distributing or reproducing it. If the addressee(s) cannot be reached or is unknown to you, please inform the sender by return e-mail immediately and delete this e-mail message and destroy all copies.


On Oct 24, 2011, at 2:53 PM, Lucy Greco wrote:

> Hi:
> This is meant to be steps used while moving forward. I have been asked to give a three or four step process to make sure readings for students are accessible basically it's a set of instructions I am to give to faculty to assure that the documents they put online e are accessible. These documents might be scanned articles library readings exerts from books and so on. I have been told that it cannot be more than three or four steps so that it would not be intimidating and that talking about structure and tagging is getting to technical. I am at a loss really because what I think I am being asked to say is that providing the text is all that is needed. And I really don't want to say that. One of the other things I was asked was if there was a way to flag a potential problem document on the way to it being uploaded. I am really frustrated on this process I know access is not extraordinarily hard but three or four steps is not enough ether. At least I am not looking at makin
g
> forms in this project. I have to have the documents be usable by a highly intelligent group. but I have also been told that the faculty don't want steps that will take more than a few minutes to do.
>
>
> Lucy Greco
> Assistive Technology Specialist
> Disabled Student's Program UC Berkeley
> (510) 643-7591
> http://attlc.berkeley.edu
> http://webaccess.berkeley.edu
>
>
>