WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

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

for

From: Mark Berning
Date: Dec 6, 2023 11:58AM


I agree that it would be nice to start with accessible source documents but
in our case the documents are provided by third party software or third
party vendors. We do not create the PDFs. Curious if other state/federal
agencies have refused inaccessible PDFs from third parties.

On Wed, Dec 6, 2023 at 10:36 AM < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> 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!
>
> — — —
> Bevi Chagnon | Designer, Accessibility Technician | <EMAIL REMOVED>
> — — —
> PubCom: Technologists for Accessible Design + Publishing
> consulting • training • development • design • sec. 508 services
> Upcoming classes at www.PubCom.com/classes
> — — —
> Latest blog-newsletter – Simple Guide to Writing Alt-Text
>
>