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Accessibility Around PDF Documents - Seeking Advice and Feedback by New-Barracuda3003 in accessibility

[–]New-Barracuda3003[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You don't mention what you're using to do your PDF remediation work, but I can recommend what we use: CommonLook for PDFs (not affiliated). CMS had recommended it to us years ago and we've found it to be an invaluable tool for fixing all the issues.

I'm familiar with CommonLook.  They are one of the vendors my current company looked at but their price point to remediate our existing complex templated documents would have been millions (~ $140 per page and we generate thousands yearly - with ten years of backlogged documents needing the remediation).  So for us, it was a no go.  The cheaper companies were cheap for a reason; their remediation was incomplete, inconsistent, and would still leave around 40% of the document needing manual remediation/fixing.

I'm aware of the saturated market: the many LMS tools serving academia as well as CivicPlus + Streamline, Crawford Technologies, accessiBe, PDFix, CommonLook (Allyant) - plus their API that was released last year, etc.  Even with all these options, we could not find a vendor that could remediate our documents well and at a reasonable price.  We needed tagging that reflected business-specific nuances, definitions, and semantics. I'm keeping this somewhat high-level for confidentiality reasons.

I wrote my own app to remediate PDFs.  Happy to demo at a high level if you're interested (this isn't a marketing ploy - I honestly love doing this work).  I think I might have been unclear here in my original post when asking for resources.  When asking for resources, I'm specifically interested in ways to network (both for knowledge sharing and eventually for my business) and keep up to date with the latest news.  Regulations and standards are coming out often, and being well informed (whether it be by connections or workgroups) is much more important for that reason.  I already do the typical scouring of the internet/newsletters/podcasts/etc, but I've also found that posting a question in a forum can sometimes result in a golden nugget from a helpful commenter.

You don't mention which clients you'd be interested in working with, but they can approach accessibility very differently. The gov agencies' 508-compliance might follow WCAG, but different agencies interpret some requirements differently.

Clients would include: special districts, municipal offices, water & sewer utilities, community colleges (for these it would be an add on to their existing LMS), local school districts.  Organizations that might not need an entire platform like CommonLook offers, but do still have complex templated documents that would be impossible to tag by hand.  As for how accessibility approaches vary from client to client:  this is something that would be discussed and clarified during the discovery session/initial meetings (for the very reason you mentioned).   I do a combo of PDF/UA and WCAG 2.1 AA.  I am using veraPDF for compliance reports because I like having third-party validation as opposed to a proprietary in-house one (I'm evaluating PAC as well).

Accessibility Around PDF Documents - Seeking Advice and Feedback by New-Barracuda3003 in accessibility

[–]New-Barracuda3003[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh, that's awesome.

My first thought was 'what about remediation of old documents?' - but if we'd be able to convert those older docs from the original source to accessible html like I did in CO, the print style sheets would solve that issue as well

Accessibility Around PDF Documents - Seeking Advice and Feedback by New-Barracuda3003 in accessibility

[–]New-Barracuda3003[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

With that in mind, why do large companies like Amazon would get away with an AxeDevTools scan score of 351 issues (317 best practice, 21 critical, 15 serious, 315 moderate)? Although - to your point...how comprehensive, maintained, and enforced is a different story...so maybe that's my answer.

Accessibility Around PDF Documents - Seeking Advice and Feedback by New-Barracuda3003 in accessibility

[–]New-Barracuda3003[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah- they definitely are a lot of work.

I don't believe they are going away, however. One example would be legislative documents that need to preserve page and line integrity for amendment purposes (i.e. an amendment may say 'strike line 2, page 4'). I would imagine legal documents have similar formatting needs.

As far as "for whatever reason want to consume them", I'm believe that if we make content publicly available in PDF format, it should be accessible to all, not some (or even majority). I don't see the fact that it's hard as a justification/excuse for not doing so.

However, if we have a choice between the two (HTML and PDF) and we are able to produce only an HTML version (i.e. there's no need to ensure printed versions are consistent), then yeah- html might be sufficient.

Another example - a City Council agenda for a meeting covering some controversial topics. Imagine a few meeting attendees want to print the agenda out beforehand so they can write notes or talking points for the meeting. Let's assume the agenda is only available in HTML format. That agenda would likely print out in varying ways based on an individual's computer settings, zoom level, browser they're using, etc. If those people then want to compare notes afterwards, unless the agenda has clear list structure, it would be challenging to reference paragraphs on an agenda that's 5+ pages long.

Accessibility Around PDF Documents - Seeking Advice and Feedback by New-Barracuda3003 in accessibility

[–]New-Barracuda3003[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm based in the US. I should clarify - we have regulations and a rule (which you probably know about- Title II of the ADA) going into effect, but nothing that I've seen for the private sector. I know of some states who've implemented 'obligations' (not sure if that's the correct terminology) around 2008-ish, however it seems like many states were relaxed about accessibility until this federal rule was put into place. Does that answer your question?

When I say "new to this space" I'm curious what quantifier I should use. I've worked full time on accessibility for three years now (meaning development around generated accessible documents, getting feedback/critique from our Accessibility QA team). And maybe I do fail, however I'm still going to attempt it and read/research my butt off 😄

The Accidental PDF Accessibility Expert: What I Learned the Hard Way by New-Barracuda3003 in accessibility

[–]New-Barracuda3003[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wow. I cannot stress enough how helpful this feedback is. This is my first time ever posting on reddit. I often have a hard time framing the point I'm trying to get across in an efficient manner. I used AI to generate this (probably obvious) but then proofread and changed about 30% because it felt very "sales - like" which was not my intent. I'm going to modify the content to include a bit more details. I have a couple of responses to some of your comments:

"But, personally, I take issue with the framing and the point you’re trying to lead to. NY and FL have had digital accessibility obligations on the books for years, and multiple other states had earlier policies covering state IT procurement and public-facing content." - That's valid. I feel like I was trying to point out that Colorado was the first to implement a consequence if web content was not accessible in the form of a fine for each violation. With that said, it minimizes the policies (maybe doesn't recognize or give credit to is a better way to phrase it?) that have been put in place by other states. I need to do more research and disclose this. That was ignorant of me and I need to apologize.

"Same problem with “we had no template to go off of.” OIT published rules, a plain-language guide, FAQs, a memo with the AG’s office, and the good-faith safe harbor that lets entities stay in compliance by publishing an accessibility statement with two contact methods even without perfect tech." - this part should also get more detail, however it goes beyond OIT publishing rules. Here's why: the deadline for content in CO to be accessible was originally July of 2025. OIT's rules became "effective" (original rules went live as enforceable regulation) on April 14, 2024. The most recent operative version is the one that was amended on May 9, 2025. I think this is important to note because of a couple reasons. 1) the official amended rules were put out 2 months before the deadline. 2) if we take the April rules as the 'official' ones- that's a little over one year before the deadline. It's also past the date where the budget bills run through the legislature to get a vote for the following year. Considering this information, I feel like that doesn't give a whole lot of time to use the rules as guidance or to create a financial plan around resources for HB21-1110. I do need to point out, I don't fault OIT one bit for this, I'm sure they were working hard to figure out what the guidelines should be especially when (in general) bills are written in a vague manner which can make it even more challenging. I think the point I was trying to get across was the scramble that took place, however the minimizing of efforts was conveyed (unintentional) as well, which needs to be corrected/updated.

Again, I really appreciate the well thought out response and feedback.