As more of our personal and professional lives take place in the digital realm, document accessibility has never been more important.
It has become so integral, in fact, that there are legal requirements in many countries for businesses to ensure digital document accessibility – particularly in the industry sectors of education, healthcare, government and finance.
Document accessibility refers to the process of designing documents in a way that allows people living with disabilities to read and interact with the content, often with the aid of screen reading tools.
If your business’s documents are meeting accessibility standards, you’re unlocking access to your content for people living with visual, auditory, cognitive, and physical disabilities.
At Docmosis, we enable document authors to integrate accessibility practices throughout the early stages of document generation to empowering them to meet – and maintain – the relevant standards.
What are some examples of accessibility standards?
Document accessibility standards are based on the international Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which outline ways for all digital content, including text documents and PDFs, to be accessible to people living with disabilities.
Some WCAG recommendations include,
- Structuring documents with clear headings and lists
- Using plain and legible fonts in appropriate sizes
- Providing captions for multimedia content
- Ensuring sufficient colour contrast
PDFs, in particular, can present an accessibility challenge for people using screen readers due to text being interpreted as an image rather than words. One way to address this concern is by ensuring an Alt Text description is assigned to all images used throughout a document. The WCAG suggest this should be standard practice for all online content creation.
What are the implications for business?
In many countries, there are laws that require individuals and corporations behind online content to provide equal access to people living with disabilities. In the United States, for example, there are Federal laws that require all public sector bodies and commercial facilities to offer equal access to documentation, as well as State level anti-discrimination laws which can be applied in the same way to other online content. There is similar anti-discrimination legislation in Australia, and in many European countries.
Document accessibility is especially important in sectors such as healthcare and education, where inclusivity is crucial. But it’s also vital in industries such as finance and law, where people living with disabilities must be able to read and understand relevant documents.
While inclusivity is at the core of document accessibility, there are other benefits to online documents being easier to read, interpret and understand; overall efficiency can improve and the user-experience for individuals without disabilities can improve.
What does Docmosis provide to help you meet accessibility standards?
At Docmosis, we recognise the importance of document accessibility while also acknowledging it can be complex and time-consuming for the creator. Our software enables businesses to create templates that meet accessibility standards for layout and design, and then maintain those standards as documents are generated.
For example, Docmosis’ document generation software ensures that settings like Alt Text tags and document titles, once set in the templates, make their way to the generated document. These templates are then used as the basis for generating subsequent documents that are accessible.
Docmosis is committed to the principles behind document accessibility and is here to help your business on its journey to creating inclusive digital documents.
