If you thought about document accessibility in the past but didn’t take any action, it might be time to give it a second look. It’s a hot topic right now and is a popular theme at industry events and online articles. Now is a great time to audit your customer communications to ensure they're accessible to all consumers.
Universal document accessibility ensures that digital documents are accessible to everyone, regardless of their abilities or disabilities. In today's digital age, the many government regulations and country-wide accessibility acts requiring compliance, and the overwhelming global support for inclusivity have made it more important than ever to ensure that all individuals can access and use digital documents.
With approximately 16% of the global population having some sort of disability or impairment, it is easy to see why this would be important – it’s an opportunity to be inclusive and represents a growth opportunity. Not providing accessible documents is also a big risk - in 2022, plaintiffs filed over 4000 digital accessibility lawsuits in the U.S. alone. It's important to note that digital accessibility also covers PDFs available on websites or sent via email. Many companies have thousands of PDFs (Portable Document Files) on websites and being distributed via email, so knowing that each one of those documents that is not accessible could lead to a lawsuit presents a huge risk.
What makes a document accessible?
An accessible document is a document created to be as easily readable by a low vision or non-sighted reader as a sighted reader. There are two main standards for governing, one for PDFs and one for digital communications.
PDF/UA (universal accessibility) is a global standard defining how to make a PDF document readable using assistive technologies like a screen reader. A tagged PDF or compliant PDF is usually referred to as "PDF/UA," which means the document is designed to ensure accessibility for people with visual, hearing, and mobility impairments.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) were developed for digital content like emails and websites and dictate that web content be capable of interacting with various assistive technologies. Developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), they are widely accepted as the go-to standard for digital accessibility compliance.
Accessibility is an imperative priority for all businesses
Many organizations now prioritize equitable information access due to widespread document accessibility laws in various countries, which come with fines and penalties for non-compliance. This shift is largely driven by government regulations and specific national laws, with a growing awareness of the importance of accessibility. In fact, a recent study from Aspire Communications found that 66% of companies they surveyed, planned to address accessibility issues.
Enforcement of well-known laws and regulations is becoming stricter. The European Accessibility Act, set to take effect in 2025, prompts many European companies to prepare in advance. The Act aims to standardize accessibility rules across all EU countries, and we hear it will be strictly enforced leaving no room for non-compliance.
So why should companies make documents accessible? Ensuring accessibility is well, it's the right thing to do. By prioritizing accessibility, you open your doors to a wider audience and foster inclusivity. There are laws for physical accessibility – think about a ramp at the entrance to a building – so it only makes sense to have laws for content accessibility too. Following are a few reasons to make your customer communication documents accessible to all:
- When a company is committed to accessibility, it shows that it values all individuals and is committed to inclusivity. This can enhance its brand reputation and attract customers who value diversity and inclusion.
- You don’t want to alienate any part of your customer base so communicating with all customers equally is important. Equally may not mean that information is consumed in the same way, but it means that the final understanding is equal.
- All public-facing documents must be accessible. Since you cannot control where documents go after they are sent out (a PDF is by nature “portable”), everything must be accessible when it leaves your control.
- It results in better SEO -- website content is more “findable” when your content is accessible, and search engines ingest accessible formats better - improving your SEO.
- Avoiding legal pitfalls - ensuring your content is accessible helps protect your business from legal challenges, including penalties and fines, and the associated negative publicity.
Accessibility by design vs post-composition remediation
Designing your customer communications with accessibility in mind should be a best practice, and you should have the right tools in place to make that a reality. Most customer communications software can create accessible documents, emails, web pages an more, which is great. However, not all companies take advantage of those capabilities. Going forward we should see that mindset change to designing documents to be accessible by design.
The next area to look at is the existing documents. What about all of those archived documents that customers ask for on demand? What about all of those PDFs you’ve already sent out, posted on the company website, or stored? Post-composition remediation involves making existing documents accessible. With the right remediation software, you can make just about any historical document from a partner, company archive, or another external source accessible.
With post-composition software combined with customer communications management software, documents can be made accessible in real-time and promptly presented on a device for seamless interaction with assistive technology.
The bottom line is this: universal document accessibility is critical for ensuring that digital documents are accessible to everyone, regardless of their abilities or disabilities. It ensures equal access to information, meets legal and regulatory requirements, improves user experience, increases productivity and efficiency, enhances brand reputation, and meets the needs of the customer segment.
Learn more about how Quadient Inspire can help. On May 15th, I'll be presenting a session entitled ‘Communicating with clarity: Tools for accessible, dynamic communications’, at our global virtual event Quadient Connects. You’ll see how Quadient Inspire can help you create communications that are optimized for accessibility with WCAG-compliant templates, as well as learn how to make any fully composed PDFs accessible. Secure your place now!
