Accessibility in PDF and Elsewhere - A presentation from Crawford Technologies Inc. - http://www.crawfordtech.com/

1. Accessibility in PDF and Elsewhere A presentation fromCrawford Technologies Inc. www.crawfordtech.com Follow, Like and Join us at about.me/CrawfordTechInc

2. Agenda Introduction: What are Transactional Customer Communications documents & what are the major trends affecting them? Who needs accessible documents? Some demographic statistics The importance of PDF/A to transactional documents and accessibility Two approaches to creating accessible documents The importance of PDF/UA Conclusion & Wrap up

3. What are Transactional Customer Communication Documents Point in time records of your contractual and financial relationship Documents sent to you physically or electronically Convey amounts due, interest owing, minimum amount due, insurance coverage, how your investments are doing, etc. Regulations compel organizations to send these documents to their customers. Make up a large percentage of printed documents – over 80 Billion documents are mailed per year in the US alone Source: 1. US Postal Service 2010 Q2 summary financial report. Direct mail and other mail adds another approx. 52 billion letters. 2. TAPPI’s Paper University statistics: “Every year in America, more than 2 billion books, 350 million magazines, and 24 billion newspapers are published”

4. What are the Major Trends with Transactional Customer Communication Documents? The migration from physical to electronic delivery of documents Document archiving for legal, compliance and customer service purposes – PDF/A is the standard here New technology introductions and ‘TransPromo’ The need to protect customers private data both electronically and physically And now . . . document accessibility

5. Who Needs Accessible Documents? Anyone who is “Print Disabled” Anyone with Visual limitations due to diabetes, blindness, cataracts, old age Anyone with Dyslexia Accessible documents usage is currently: 6% for Braille 92% for Large Print 0.5% for e-text 1.5% for audio files. PDF?

6. Why Does PDF/A Matter for Transactional Customer Communication Documents? PDF/A is the standard for transactional document storage for customer service and compliance purposes Conformance levels are not well understood – accurate rendering is the key concern Text re-flow and accurate text extraction should be considered for mobile use and workflow needs Tagging, natural reading order, headings, bookmarks, alternative text are some of the key considerations for accessibility, all of which can be accomplished within a PDF/A document

7. Two Approaches to Creating Accessible Documents Do it yourself Build internal subject matter expertise, acquire and install software, hardware and systems, deploy and manage. Evolve. Some large organizations will do this Outsource Let a service provider/vendor provide the guidance and services to fulfill all document accessibility needs Most organizations will do this In either case, ongoing knowledge of trends, standards developments, technology developments will be key to deploying an effective document accessibility strategy

8. The Importance of PDF/UA PDF/UA will build upon the already implemented PDF/A foundation that is in place in transactional document producing organizations today. Users needing document accessibility need a single, standard document type for all of their assistive technology uses. This is NOT the case today! PDF/UA will meet that need! Developers of assistive technology may now focus on a single accessible document format reducing development and support costs and hopefully reducing costs to users

9. Conclusion & Wrap Up PDF/UA is a fantastic and anticipated standard PDF/UA will enable transactional document producing organizations to communicate to all of their customers equally Because PDF/UA is supported within PDF/A it will continue to meet these organization’s archiving needs PDF/UA will form the cornerstone of organizations document accessibility strategies PDF/UA will become the consistent accessibility standard for the visually disabled community and the assistive technology vendors that support them.

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